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IN THE FORTUNE 



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ADAMS • BASSRTT- BEAT^ 
BOMPASSE SICC 

CANNON • C 0> HMAN 

DEANDE LA NOIE • PJ.AVEL 

FOfiDHICKS ^7 • MORGAN 

MORTON " \S- PALMER 

PRENCE • . X X . oLMONSON 

STATIE- STEWARTTENrH 

WINSLOW- HT 

'^IN THB ANNE &Tffi/*\ 
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ANNABEL- BA^^^« BARTLETT 

BURCHER • COr..^ , r • CLARK 

CUTHBERTSON- DIX FAUNCE 

FLOODHEARJDHOLMAN- JENNY 

KEMPTON- ^UTCHELL 

NORTON- C I- PRATT 

RAND R\l v.1^1 i c • SNOW 

SPRACUB '^^^^ ^EN 

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S<^i^uvM^(£i^i^ 



THE PILGRIM SHORE 



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..IE PILGRIM 



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1 1 little'Pitlun 

or jrom Fancy ov /, 



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THE PILGRIM SHORE 




ny Edmund /fCf^rett- '^itf? many 
little Vifturings d^zvr^rom Nature 
or jrom Fancy by r^e Vn^iter^pub- 
li/hed at Soston Ity Sittle.Srown 




Copyright. 1900, 
By Little, Brown, and Company 



UNIVERSITY PRESS . JOHN WILSON 
AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 



Pheface 




Interduction wHch may be skipt " 

TneBiglowPapers 



VEN if travel abroad best 
strengthens our love of 
country, we should not 
neglect for it those 
places, hallowed by their 
associations or history, that 
He at our very doors. And 
so an occasional reminder 
of the attractions of our own 
land may not be amiss, and 
it is for the purpose of set- 
ting forth in a familiar way 
the charm of a pilgrimage 
through some of our own towns that this 
book is now published. 

The writer has already recorded in a like 
manner a journey northward to Cape Ann, ^ 
^ Romance and Reality of the Puritan Coast. 







£:r^ 



& 






8 Preface. 

and as this volume treats of the South Shore 
of Massachusetts Bay,— the two books to- 
gether describe the coast of the Puritans and 
that of the Pilgrims. 

These two regions, like the two peoples 
themselves, while having much in common, 
yet present marked contrasts. 

The Puritan land is rich, populous, and en- 
terprising. Along its length teeming cities 
and growing towns are ever reaching toward 
each other. All day long its air is vexed 
with the thunder of rolling trains and the 
shriek of shrill complaining trolleys. Tall 
factory chimneys vie in height with its stee- 
ples and wreathe their smoke over its homes, 
sails of toil and pleasure crowd its harbors. 
It is active, busy, energetic, laborious, and 
competent. Its shore is comparatively high, 
bold, and sternly rockbound.^ 

^ In reality it extends southward to the rocks of Cohas- 
set, for the river that flows through this town marked the 
boundary between the Plymouth and the Massachusetts 
IJay colonies. In this book, however, the whole South 
.Shore from Boston to Plymouth is treated of under the- 
general title of the Pilgrim Shore. 



Preface. 9 

The land of the Pilgrims is by contrast less 
bold and rocky, and it has not kept pace with 
the other side of the bay, either in population, 
material prosperity, or enterprise. It has 
been until quite lately very much more 
countrified and quiet, and having for many 
years been less easy of access, it is not so well 
known as a whole. In spite of this, however, 
none of the North Shore towns is so famous 
as Plymouth, whose soil and waters nourished 
the Forefathers, men whose love of mercy 
and justice, whose humanity and nobility of 
character, have hallowed the place of their 
dwelling, and made their name revered at 
home and abroad. 

" There are places and objects so intimately 
associated with the world's greatest men or 
with mighty deeds," says Governor Roger 
VVolcott, "that the soul of him who gazes 
upon them is lost in a sense of reverent awe, 
as it listens to the voice that speaks from the 
past in words like those which came from the 
burning bush, ' Put off thy shoes from off thy 
feet, for the place whereon thou standest is 



lO Preface. 

holy ground.' On the sloping hillside of Ply- 
mouth such a voice is breathed by the brood- 
ing genius of the place, and the ear must be 
dull that fails to catch the whispered words." 
Need we wonder then that this old town 
has become an American shrine, and the ways 
that lead to it made paths of pilgrimage? 
Somehow, in spite of the gentle and liberal 
tendencies of the Pilgrims, one associates 
them most often with a bleak and wintry 
shore such as they landed on that stormy 
December night so long ago. It seems to 
harmonize well with the stern courage which 
prompted them to set forth for the New 
World, and is a fitting background to the 
hardy, temperate, manly lives of those res- 
olute hearts, self-exiled for conscience' sake. 
Happily, however, the coast is not always 
forbidding, nor its beauty awesome ; not al- 
ways does a leaden sky hang low over wan 
surges, nor the gray sea fling its freezing 
spray across a pallid shore to black forests 
buffeted by the icy north wind. Far other- 
wise is it when summer clothes it in crcnia] 




A Pilgrim. 



Preface. 13 

and smiling beaut}-. Then kindly blue waves 
lap its warm glimmering sands. To beach 
and rock creep grass, and vine, and flowering 
shrub. Birds then sing in its groves, but- 
terflies flutter over its fields, the pines, like 
swinging censers perfume the winds and cast 
welcome shadows over the warm earth. As 
if dressed for a festival, the landscape glistens 
under the sun, and all is as sweet as the 
morning. It was in such pleasant times 
that the notes and sketches in this book 
were made, and the purpose has been, while 
wandering along, rendering homage to the 
land's beauty, to record its present aspect 
and recall in a measure its traditions and 
history. 




CONTENT5 



Page 

Preface _ 

DOKCHESTER ^j 

Nepoxset ,Q 

QUINCY ., 

Weymouth ^ __ 

HiNGHA.M gg 

H^'Li- 97 

Cohasset ,Q(. 

SCITUATE J, J 

^IARSHFIELD J -^ 

DuxBURv J.- 
Kingston jgj 

Plymouth j3_ 



A LIST 

OF THE 







-m 




y^:)fe&^' 



'-^! 



rvT 






LLU^TgRATIONS 



Priscilla Frontispiece 

Preface, Decorative Iniiial 7 

A Pilgrim 1 1 

Tailpiece 13 

Contents^ Decorative Headiiii; 15 

List of Illustrations, Decoratii'e Heading . . . 17 

Dorc/iester, Decorati7)e Initial 21 

" Gardens there were evcrywliere " .... 24 

The Blake House 27 

" Till in turn she dreamed herself " ... 31 

Captain Roger Clap 37 



1 8 A List of the Illustrations 



PAGE 



A'epoiiset^ Decorative Initial 39 

" Mounted guard at a window '■ .... 41 

Qiiincy, Decorative Heading 43 

Unitarian Churcii, WoUaston 44 

" The steep hill by the tablet "..„.. 47 

Dorothy Q 51 

The Quincy House . 55 

Merrie Mounte 59 

Lord of Misrule 61 

" Cut down the Maypole" ...... 65 

Christ Church Fountain 69 

John Quincy Adams was born here ... 73 

John Adams House 76 

Weymouth, Decorative Heading "jj 

The Fore River 78 

Wattawamat «... 81 

The Smith Parsonage 84 

Hinghani, Decorative Heading 86 

Home of General Lincoln 87 

Major-General Lincoln 89 

An Antique Treasure 94 

Hull, Decorative Heading 97 

"As necessary as church and preaching" . 99 

Hollyhocks 103 



A List of the Illustrations 19 

PAGE 

Cohassef, Decorative Heading 105 

The Jerusalem Road 107 

Cohasset River 1 1 1 

Cohasset Common 113 

"Through the village" 115 

'• Their home on the little hill " .... 116 

The old Lincoln House ....... 119 

Scitunte, Decorative Heading . . . . . . I2E 

Fourth Cliff, Scituate 122 

The Street, Scituate Harbor 125 

"The mill that stood by it" . . . . . 129 

The "Old Oaken Bucket" 133 

" The placid stream sleeps " 135 

On Humarock Beach 137 

" And Jemmy the Negur shall catch it for 

her" 141 

MarsJifield, Decorative Headim^ 143 

On the old White Estate 144 

The Winslow Arms 147 

Proud Peacocks 149 

The old Winslow House 153 

Duxbury, Decorative Heading 157 

"The Married Lovers" 159 

The John Alden House 163 

The Arch Priscilla 167 



PAGE 



20 A List of the Illustrations 

Duxbiiry (continued). 

The Grave of Miles Standish 169 

" At Standish's Fireside" 173 

Miles Standish 175 

The Standish Cottage 179 

Kingston, Decorative Heading 181 

By Island Creek ... 182 

Major John Bradford's House 184 

Plynwiith, Decorative Headitig 187 

The pewter plate and iron pot ..... 192 

" Plymouth's first, last, and only duel" . . 197 

One of the quaint chairs 199 

Flax-wheel 199 

Cradle 200 

North Street 203 

" Mary Chilton first " 209 

Site of First House 213 

Ancient Mere-steads 217 

Governor Bradford 219 

The Bradford Monument 223 

The Oldest House 225 

"A Paradise to Etchers" 227 

Pond Lilies 230 

"Just as the Pilgrims found it" ... . 231 

Tailpiece 234 



DoRCliE5TER 




he way out of cities is not always a 
pleasant one, for between town 
and country there lies commonly 
a forlorn region, neither the one nor 
the other, whence the country has 
fled, and the city has not yet set 
firmly its foot. It seems like some 
melancholy shore on which beat the 
waves of urban life, casting up the 
scum and dregs 
^' of its poverty, 

, toi.l, and 

^ . misery. 

-^^^1,3^"^ ~ ■ ' ■ Over 
-"^ ^ this land, 

"^'^ blighted 

by the smoke and cinders of grimy work- 
shops, brood squalor, intemperance, and 



2 2 The Pilgrim Shore 



&' 



weariness, settling on the old dumps and 
arid wastes, fattening ever on the filth, the 
unhealthy fumes, and the noxious odors that 
overspread and arise from all this cast-out 
detritus. Hurry through this unlovely land, 
if it cannot be avoided. 

Such a waste must be passed going to 
the Pilgrim Shore, unless one leaves the city 
from the west, and so goes by the parks and 
through Roxbury to the first town on the 
South Shore, " Good Old Dorchester." 
Settled in 1630, it was first known as Matta- 
pan ; for in history we read that the Court 
of Assistants held at Charlestown, September 
7, 1630, ordered that " Trimountaine be called 
Boston ; Mattapan, Dorchester, and the 
towne upon Charles Ryver, Watertown." 

" Why they called it Dorchester," says 
elder James Blake, one of the earliest annalists, 
" I never heard ; but there was some of ye 
Towne of Dorchester that settled here, and 
it is very likely it might be in honor of ye 
aforesaid Rev'd Mr. White of Dorchester." 
This Mr. White was Rector of Trinity Parish, 



Dorchester. 23 

Dorchester, England, and was the most 
prominent of the active promoters of the 
Puritan emigration. He organized the church 
that settled here, and aided it with heart and 
purse. 

In 1633 this was declared to be the great- 
est town in all New England, by the author 
of " New England's Prospect," well wooded 
and watered : " very good arable grounds and 
Hay-ground, faire Cornefields and pleasant 
Gardens." And this description of its attrac- 
tions seems to have held good many, many 
years ; indeed no town near Boston for so 
long a time preserved its rural beauty, its 
country simplicity, and its air of well-bred 
English quiet. I remember, especially, just 
how it used to look in the sixties seen from 
the neighboring high hills of Roxbury, so 
invitingly fair it was, stretching green un- 
dulations against its blue bay and the sea's 
rim, its houses and steeples shining white, 
and its gardens hanging to its hillsides like 
apples on a bough. Gardens there were 
everywhere, pleasant as in the days of the 



24 



The Pilo-rim Shore. 



quaint old author of the " Prospect," not like 
the shaven lawns and geometric parterres of 







" Gardens tlure were everywlicre.'''' 



/C'' 



to-day, nor shamming nature either, but 
picturesquely formal and yet accidental. 



Dorchester. 25 

Therein grew venerable pear-trees, and spread 
crooked apple boughs, and in cherry-time 
luscious black-hearts and white-hearts hung 
thickly above their own gummy trunks. 
Streaked gooseberries fattened there, and 
currants crimsoned, and in thorny thickets 
long blackberries ripened and sweetened 
till they dropped of their own weight to the 
rich and shaded soil that nourished them. 
And all kinds of old fashioned flowers spread 
their bloom along the prim box-bordered 
paths that led formally to the pleasant home- 
steads. Some of them old Revolutionary 
mansions, and some that were already an- 
tique when these were built, dating from that 
far colonial time when this was the greatest 
town in all New England. 

Of all these old colonial houses, the only 
one remaining nearly in its original condition 
is the old Blake house, said to have been built 
before 1650 by elder James Blake. Its pre- 
servation is due to the Dorchester Historical 
Society, whose home it now is. They re- 
stored it, and moved it from its old founda- 



26 The Pilgrim Shore. 

tion to its present site under the great trees 
where the new park way starts from the end 
of Massachusetts Avenue. 

It was on a winter's night, just after a great 
snow-storm, that I made my first visit to this 
old colonial home. Upon the roof the snow 
sparkled coldly against the frosty sky, and 
through the latticed windows the lamp and 
fire-light passed the black walls and flickered 
on the snow-drifts and the winter-laden trees, 
giving a promise of the warmth and cosy 
old-fashioned comfort within. I seemed to 
step at once by the hospitably opened door 
into a past far from the promiscuous apart- 
ment houses near by, and the shrieking, clang- 
ing trolley car that had whisked me through 
the city streets with our modern marvellous 
and unregarded magic. The present slipped 
away from me, and my fancy peopled the low 
ceiled rooms with the shapes of staid God- 
fearing Puritans. Undoubtedly, it was in 
some interior quaintly like this that Captain 
Roger Clap, the first annalist of Dorchester, 




The Blake House. 



Dorchester. 29 

set down his memoirs of that early time that 
are now so precious. And I seemed to see 
him at his work upon them in moments 
snatched from ruder toil. And Mistress 
Joanna Blake, too, hushing the children, or 
singing softly one of the old Puritan hymns 
as she rocked the youngest to sleep, till in 
turn she dreamed herself, dreamed of the 
hedgerows and orchards of old Dorsetshire, 
the pleasant lanes, the breezy hills, the shel- 
tered valleys, the roses, the hawthorn, the 
skylark and nightingale, snugly thatched 
cottages, the old ivy clad church and the 
quiet church-yard in their old home beyond 
the wide, wide sea. I wonder if she did not 
sometimes sigh for the motherland, in spite of 
the Puritan grit. No such weakness or ten- 
derness, however, found a place in the hearts 
of the men, if they were all like Captain 
Roger Clap ; for, after reciting the sore straits 
to which they were put by hardships, and for 
want of provisions for themselves and their 
little ones, he could yet find it in his heart to 
write, " I do not remember that I ever did 



30 The Pilgrim Shore. 

wish in my Heart that I had not come unto 
this Country or that I ever did wish myself 
back again to my P^ather's House." 

But comforts accumulated in time; for thus 
he apostrophizes his children, " You have 
better Food and Raiment than was in former 
times ; but have you better Hearts than your 
Forefathers had? If so, Rejoice in that 
Mercy and let New England then shout for 
Joy." 

The old house has been happily furnished 
with old colonial and provincial belonging, so 
that it is precious to the artist or antiquary. 
In the summer it seems a little out of keep- 
ing with its park-like surroundings, and one 
is not surprised to learn then that it has been 
moved here. It has the look of those an- 
tiques which one sees set in the glass cases 
of museums, stripped of their natural uses 
and surroundings, and become only objects 
of curiosity. 

Here, as elsewhere in Dorchester, one will 
notice the magnificent old trees. The people 
must always have loved trees, and to this day 







•• Till in turn she dreamed ficrself." 



Dorchester. 3 3 

they protect and preserve them lovingly. A 
bit of the sidewalk is not begrudged them, 
nor even a little of the roadway. After all, 
what decent man would not be willing to 
turn a little out of his way for the sake of a 
tree ! So they lift their screen of leaves in 
the summer, their lacing of twigs in the 
winter, over the streets, and cast shade and 
beauty over the whole place. However, this 
old town is changing so rapidly that it seems 
as if stone and brick must soon take the place 
of leaves and grass, and the trees follow after 
the old houses. Indeed, the new houses 
seem no longer like interlopers, for it is rather 
the old ones, hanging hopelessly to their 
diminished gardens, that seem out of place, 
elbowed out of countenance by aggressive 
newcomers, like guests that have worn out 
their welcome. It is a pity that they should 
all go, as go they must in a short time. 

But if Dorchester is to be robbed of her 

old landmarks, no one shall take from her 

the grand part she played in the making of 

the Puritan republic. Here was raised the 

3 



34 The Pilgrim Shore. 

first meeting-house ^ in the Bay Colony. She 
claims, too, the distinguished honor of having 
instituted the first special town government 
in New England. But perhaps greater pride 
yet is felt that the people of Dorchester were 
the first in all America who by a direct tax 
or assessment made public provision for a 
free school. The instruction to the school- 
master was that he should " equally and 
impartially receive and instruct such as shalbe 
sent and Committed to him for that end, 
whither there parents bee poore or rich." 
This was the corner-stone of our public 
school system. The moneys for this purpose 
came from the rental of Thompson's Island, 
which was owned by the town. 

This island lies across Dorchester Bay, off 
Squantum Point, and is seen in the glimpses 
that one has of the bay and harbor on the 
road to Neponset. At high tide this view is 
very pretty. In the foreground lies embow- 
ered Savin Hill, and beyond it South Boston. 

1 It was built in 1631 on the plain near the corner of 
Cottage and Pleasant Streets. 



Dorchester. 35 

The latter was a great attraction to the Puri- 
tan settlers, for on that grassy neck of land 
they found fine pasturage for their cattle. 

From the Marine Park at the Point, the 
long iron pier is seen jutting out to Fort In- 
dependence on Castle Island. This has 
been a strong place since 1634, or almost 
from the first settlement; for, says Captain 
Roger Clap, " God stirred up his poor ser- 
vants to use means in their beginnings for their 
preservation. ... At first they built a castle 
with mud walls which stood divers years . . . 
when the mud walls failed it was built again 
with pine-trees and earth." Brick walls 
replaced these in 1645, '^'"'d> says Edward 
Johnson, "Although this Castle cost about 
;^4000 yet are not this poor pilgrim people 
weary of maintaining it in good repair." 

Roger Clap was captain of "The Castle" 
in his old age, when it was indeed a strong 
fort for that time, mounting " 38 guns and 16 
whole culverin." Its name was changed in 
1705 to Castle William, in honor probably of 
the Prince of Orange, William III., though 



36 The Pilgrim Shore. 

he had at that date been dead three years, 
and the colonies were under the rule of 
simple, homely Queen Anne. Again was it 
rechristened, in 1799, after it had been ceded 
to the national government, and the temper 
of the people required a name more in keep- 
ing with their republican contempt of kings, 
and so it was called Fort Independence, as 
it is to-day. 

Though the shore of Dorchester Bay was 
perhaps never attractive except at high tide, 
still it must have deserved a better fate than 
has come to it. Neglect and other obvious 
factors have brought it to a state of decided 
unloveliness. The redeeming feature of the 
ride shorevvisc is the outlook over the bay 
and harbor, for there are few breaks in the 
long dreariness of the ride down to the village 
of Neponset. 




Captain Roger Clap. 



EPON5ET 



iHlS part of Dorchester 
is named from the 
Neponset tribe of In- 
dians, whose home it 
was. Here change is 
as busy as in the other 
parts of Dorchester, 
and its old landmarks 
have nearly all passed 
away. Perhaps the greatest loss was that of 
the Old Minot House, for it was not only a 
very old house, built before 1640, but it was 
called the oldest wooden house on the conti- 
nent. Yet although it seemed outwardly to 
be only of wood, it was really all lined be- 
tween its ponderous oaken timbers with brick, 
fort-like and bullet proof. Picturesquely an- 
cient it was, with a pleasant outlook over the 




40 The Pilgrim Shore. 

winding river and the level marshes to the 
Blue Hills. 

It had its legend, too, one tinctured with 
the resolute bravery of that old time which 
pulsed from the hearts of both men and 
women. In this instance 't was the courage 
of a woman ; for it is related that, during King 
Philip's War, a straggling red warrior sud- 
denly appeared before the old house, when it 
was occupied by a lone maid and two of John 
Minot's small children, but not to the con- 
fusion of the young woman. For no sooner 
did she see the Indian, than she hid the two 
babies under a brass kettle and ran upstairs 
for a musket, and then mounted guard at 
a window. The Indian, who was armed like- 
wise, fired first and missed her ; but she, 
taking careful aim, wounded him in the 
shoulder. Mad with rage and pain, he then 
tried to force an entrance through a window ; 
whereat the amazon rushed to the fire-place, 
and, filling a shovel with burning coals, hurled 
them in his horrible painted face. Doubly 
wounded with fire and lead, the foiled sav- 



Neponset. 



41 



age, weak and sufifering, crept off into the 
woods, in the depths of which he was after- 
wards found dead. 




''''Mounted citard at a xviiidow. 



Unhappily the old house caught fire in 
1874, and burned to the ground. What a 
pity to have lost the theatre of such an 
heroic adventure ! 

From the wooden bridge over the Nepon- 



42 ' The Pilgrim Shore. 

set River there is a pretty view inlahd across 
the green meadows and blue curves of the 
river to the steeples and groves of Milton, 
under the shadow of the Great Blue Hill 
that Captain John Smith called " the high 
mountaine of Massachusetts." Indeed, it was 
from the native name of this hill, Massa- 
tvachit-sctt, that the tribe of that name was 
called, and so our State itself takes its name 
secondly from these same hills. How long 
the range has been known as the Blue Hills, 
I do not know, but the reason is obvious to 
any one who sees them from the bay. Wood, 
in his "New England's Prospect," 1634, says 
that, " Up into the Country westward from 
the plantations is a high hill which is called 
rattlesnake hill where there is great store of 
these poysonous creatures." I know that 
these dreaded reptiles used to be common 
enough there, and I am told that they are 
even now occasionally found by the park 
guardians, and to this day the easternmost 
of the chain is called Rattlesnake Hill. 




Across the bridge 
in Atlantic a road turns 
off seaward to Squan- 
tum, along a neck of 
mingled beach and 
marsh. The name 
commemorates that fast friend 
of the Pilgrims, Sqnantum — 
Squanto or Tisquanttim, as he 
is variously called in the old 
chronicles. He piloted ten 
adventurous men of Plymouth, 
amongst whom were Standish 
and Winslow, to this beautiful little promon- 
tory in 1 62 1. According to Edward Everett 
Hale, the account of this expedition is the 
first authentic record of the landing of Eng- 
lishmen in the vicinity of Boston. The 



44 



The Pilgrim Shore. 



Ouincy Daughters of the Revolution have 
placed here a cairn with an inscription in 
memory of that early pilgrimage. 




Unitarian Cliurclt. Wollasfon. 



The peninsula is now cut up into private 
estates profusely decorated with signs for- 
bidding trespass, and is connected by a long 
causeway with Moon Island, the mouth of a 



Quincy. 45 

great sewer. Years ago Squantum was a 
pretty little place, a miniature Nahant ; but 
it now is hardly worth a visit. 

If one keeps on past Atlantic, and crosses 
the railway, skirting the Neponset River and 
Meadows, where is the site of the first rail- 
way in America, he will soon come up the 
hill by the Unitarian Church into Wollaston. 
Right by the square at the foot of First 
Hill is a tablet set in the greensward and 
thus inscribed : — 

This and the neighboring 
Wollaston Hills were part of the 

Original grant of 600 acres 

Made by the town of Boston to 

William Hutchinson in 1636-7. 

His house stood near this spot, 

And to it came his wife 

Ann Hutchinson 

on the seventeenth of April 1638 

When exiled from Massachusetts 

by the General Court of the Colony, 

and here she tarried for a brief space 

While on her way to Rhode Island 



This Tablet placed A.D. 1894. 



46 The Pilgrim Shore. 

So we find that at the beginning of its his- 
tory, Wollaston was sheltering and comfort- 
ing an " advanced woman." 

This is one of the few places named after 
their founders, for we learn from Dudley's let- 
ter to Bridget, Countess of Warwick, that "one 
Capt. Wollaston with some thirty with him 
built on a hill which he named Mount Wollas- 
ton." Now though this was undoubtedly a 
part of the original domain of the Captain, the 
first settlement was not made just here. That 
place, known sometimes as Merrymount, we 
shall visit later, meanwhile it is best to climb 
the steep hill by the tablet, the roses, the 
pretty cottages, and the flagstaff, for Wollas- 
ton is really a pretty place, and would be 
misjudged if seen only from the lower road. 
From the top of the hill. Grand View Avenue, 
shady and pleasant, leads on to Second Hill, 
with many a vista over the harbor and the 
town-hemmed city. 

A mile it is to Quincy, and, just before 
reaching the centre, our road crosses Furnace 
Brook. Then the first house on the right, at 










" r//t sU-c/ hill l>y the tablet: 



Quincy. 49 

the corner of Adams Street, is that of Brooks 
Adams. A long low gambrel-roofed mansion 
under stately elms, and girt with pleasant 
gardens, it has in a measure the air of some 
old English manor-houses which have grown 
slowly in a rambling and delightful way, by 
pushing out an ell here, or gallery there, as a 
growing family required, or a waxing fortune 
justified. 

Originally this was the country seat of a 
rich and powerful colonial family, the Vassals. 
'T is said that they were of Italian blood, and 
wealthy beyond the habit of those days, lords, 
too, of vast estates in New England and the 
West Indies. From his possessions in the 
latter place, it was that Leonard Vassal 
brought the magnificent old Santo Domingo 
mahogany with which one of the old rooms is 
panelled from floor to ceiling. 

This, the most interesting of the Adams 
houses, has sometimes been called the House 
of Golden Weddings; for in one of its 
rooms have been celebrated the golden wed- 
dings of John Adams, of his son John Quincy 
4 



50 The Pilgrim Shore. 

Adams, and his grandson Charles Francis 
Adams. 

Opposite the old estate is President's Lane, 
a lovely shaded road which leads to the other 
Adams houses. It is better, however, to cross 
the bridge over the railway, whence it is a 
short distance to the centre, or Quincy Square. 
A pleasant walk it is, too, for this suburban city 
is a delightful mixture of town and country. 
Great trees arch the streets, and under their 
shade the fine old dwellings are interspersed 
with shops, churches, banks, and schools. 

The Square is the heart of Quincy ; from it, 
like arteries, the streets lead in all directions, 
and through them pulses a \ery modern life. 

How busy it is with the trolley cars whisk- 
ing about everywhere, flashing and clanging! 
And beside all this bustling, noisy activity, 
as if to emphasize it by deep sharp contrast, 
lies the quiet old mouldering bur}'ing ground 
with its heaped turf and crumbling stones. 
Here, in their narrow beds amongst the fore- 
fathers, sleep Josiah and Edmund Quincy and 
that stalwart patriot, John Hancock. 




Dorothy (J. 



Ouincy. 53 

Well cared for is the old place now, but 
neglect fell upon it for a long time; for years 
the weeds choked its borders, the cows 
grazed among its broken and tottering head- 
stones and trampled down the forgotten 
graves. Many of the oldest monuments 
were by this means lost, and to-day the 
oldest stone dates back to only 1666, al- 
though the graveyard is contemporary with 
the earliest settlement. 

Two gates give entrance to its quiet from 
the busy street. Over one is the grim re- 
minder, " Dust tliou art and unto dust shalt 
thou return." But it seems a good omen 
that over the one usually opened is arched 
the beautiful promise, " This mortal shall put 
on immortality." 

Across the square in the deep shade of 
trees the Stone Temple rises sedately from 
its tiny greensward. Aloft it bears a cupola 
fashioned like a small pagan temple, and its 
grim sombre granite is capped by dusky 
gold. This edifice is the Unitarian church, 
and it stands on a remnant of the old train- 



54 The Pilgrim Shore. 

ing-ground. It is called the Stone Temple 
because 'twas built of granite taken from 
quarries given to the town by Ex-President 
John Adams, who requested that a "temple ' 
should be erected from their stone. In the 
church are the tombs of the two presidents, 
and monuments of the Adams family. 

Indeed one can hardly turn about in 
Ouincy without seeing something to remind 
him of the Adams or the Quincy family, and, 
in fact, the historv of the town is in a crreat 
measure a history of these two illustrious 
families. The city itself is named after 
Colonel John Ouincy, and one part of the 
people, not content to honor one family, have 
called their locality Ouincy-Adams. 

The best monument to the Ouincy family 
would have been the preservation of the 
Ouincy homestead. This old mansion, much 
altered and fallen in estate, may be reached 
from the Square by going toward Boston on 
Hancock Street. It stands just beyond the 
High School, where Furnace Brook slips 
under the road by some giant willows where 




f.»_;>eSl*cor- 



The Qiiincy House. 



Quincy. 57 

a double row of trees marks what seems to 
have been an old garden walk along the 
stream's bank. 

The poor old house where " Dorothy O " 
was born and in which generations of the 
Quincys have lived and died has the very 
air of neglect and desertion. Straggling 
weeds and rank have crept over the driveway 
once so trim, so neat. Choked by them too 
are all the garden walks and the formal old- 
fashioned flower-beds ; over their bent and 
tangled stalks brood the venerable lilacs, still 
flanking the quaint old doorway. Beside the 
antique panelled door with its ponderous 
knockers and staring bull's eyes of turbid 
glass, there still stands some of the old bor- 
dering box. Unkempt it is now, but digni- 
fied by the growth of many years, for this 
slowest of growing plants now out-tops the 
tallest man. 

The house itself has been disfigured by 
clumsy and ugly additions; yet amid these 
modern barbarities you may find bits of 
background wholly of the past, and in fact 



58 The Pilgrim Shore. 

some portions date back to 1634. Even 
above the eaves the old lilacs tower ; matted 
and branch-bound, they blotch with violet 
shadows the gray walls and old windows, and 
fret the many paned sashes, pied with the pale 
pinks, the amber greens, and amethysts of 
ancient glass= But their tints no longer color 
the landscape and stain the sky to outlooking 
Quincy eyes ; the inside shutters are closed, 
and against this panelled white, the panes 
reveal their minor harmonies to the peering 
stranger. 

At the side of the house, where a rickety 
bridge now spans the brook, was a flight of 
stone steps to a boat-landing, for Furnace 
Brook widened here into Black's Creek, 
and a great convenience it must have been 
to have at one's door a thoroughfare to that 
great highway, the sea ; for in the earl}' 
days all communication between the settle- 
ments was by water. 

The first comers to Quincy settled, as was 
the custom, close to the shore, .and not far 
from this old house, toward the Bay is Merry 



Ouincy. 



59 





,/i 



I Joloun'- 




Mount where the famous Maypole 
was set up in the days of King 
Charles. Here it was that Captain 
Wollaston settled in 1625. And 
from here he set sail, after a year's 
hard trials, discouraged and strait- 
ened in circumstances, to try and 
retrieve his fortune in Virginia; for 
the adventure was not happy, and 
the story of its early days is one of 
trouble and disappointment. 

The settlement was left in charge 
of a Lieutenant Pitcher and a small 
company. To them came one who 
was destined to weave into the fab- 
ric of New England's early history 



6o The Pilgrim Shore. 



&' 



a (qw threads of vivid dye, gaudy, if not well 
spun. This individual was one " Mr. Mor- 
ton a lawyer " (who had been a kind of 
pettifogger of Furnefell's Inne).^ He was, 
if Governor Bradford may be believed, a 
pestilent fellow and a troubler of the country. 
Of course Governor Bradford was not unpreju- 
diced, but Morton really seems to have been a 
good deal of an adventurer. However, he was 
no common one, for he was educated, tal- 
ented, and, above all, whimsical and pictur- 
esque. Devoted was he to all the follies and 
vanities of Merrie England, which included, 
from the Plymouth standpoint (it has been 
said), "The Book of Common Prayer." 
Naturally he had no sympathy with either 
Puritan or Pilgrim, and if he, too, in common 
with them, sought any liberty, it was surely not 
tliat of conscience nor religion. For in the 
plague-swept fields of the Massachusetts, and 
the silent shadowy paths of the primeval 

1 Bradford's Historj'. Morton called himself " Of 
Clifford's Inn, Gent.," and Samuel Maverick says that he 
was " a gentleman of qualitie." 




Lord of Misrule. 



Ouincy. 6^ 

forests, his heart turned not to God, but longed 
for the hcense of the old-world, and his nimble, 
scheming brain visioned a little realm where 
the jollity of English wake and fair and revel 
might be enjoyed and fostered under his 
especial care. 

So, with his brain all fancy-stuffed, he 
craftily enticed the Captain's servants, and 
conspired with them, until, taking opportunity 
they " thrust Lavetenante Pitcher out a dorcs." 

Then did Morton make himself Lord of 
Misrule, and set up a Maypole on Mount 
Wollaston, 8o feet high, topped with a buck's 
horns and decked with flowers. On it, too, he 
hung pagan conceits and gallantries in his 
own verse, for to his other accomplishments 
he added that of rhyming. 

But a Maypole was of little use to a lot of 
men, and so, as there were no fair English 
girls at hand (Hawthorne to the contrary 
notwithstanding), he and his men were forced 
to revel alone, or to beguile the Indian women 
thereto. They did not revel alone, you ma}' 
be sure. 



64 The Pilgrim Shore. 

How strange this motley assembly must 
have looked, capering about the Maypole on 
the lonely hill overlooking the lonely bay 
and the lonely fields and forests ! Surely not 
a pleasant sight to the Pilgrims was it, for 
thus does Bradford describe it, " After this 
they fell to great licenciousness, and led 
into a dissolute life, powering out them selves 
into all profaneness. . . . As if they had anew 
revived & celebrated the feasts of ye Roman 
Goddes Flora, or ye beasly practieses of y' 
madd Bacchinalians." Phen they changed 
the name of their place to Merie-mountei " as 
if this joylity would have lasted ever." 

Po maintain their prodigality, they sold to 
the Indians arms and ammunition, — a com- 
merce king-forbidden. And besides furnish- 
ing their red brothers with firearms, they also 
kept him in fire-water and themselves set a 
great example of drunkenness. So, says 
Charles Francis Adams, Mount Wollaston 
was the first recorded instance of what was 
known in later Massachusetts history as " a 
liquor nuisance." Phus the settlement be- 




^;WV 



'■' Cul down the Maypole." 



Ouincy. 67 

came not only a scandal, but a continual 
danger and menace to both colonies. 

Then the settlers scattered about the Bay, 
though they were all Episcopalians and gen- 
erally held themselves aloof from the men of 
Plymouth, besought aid of them that the mis- 
chief at Merrie-mounte might be stopped. 
To this entreaty the Pilgrims turned not a 
deaf ear, and forthwith despatched Miles 
Standish and a small guard to take the defi- 
ant Morton captive by force. 

This was easily done, for the Maypole crew 
were fortified only with Dutch courage, Mor- 
ton himself, though boastful and haughty, was 
but overloaded with it, and had in his drunk- 
enness rammed his gun half full of powder 
and balls. 

So he was easily disarmed and humbled by 
the Captain whom he had reviled with scofts 
and scorns, and reduced at last to the petty 
and spiteful revenge of calling his captor 
Captain Shrimp. 

After the encounter, Morton was shipped 
back to England, and the Pilgrims' task was 



68 The Pilsiini Shore. 



& 



done, for it is to be noted that they pushed 
not the business farther then to dehver the 
country of the Master of the Revels, and to 
stop the sale of weapons to the Indians. 
After admonishing the others, they left them 
to their own devices and returned home. 

Not so did the Puritans, however ; for Endi- 
cott soon visited the Mount, cut down the 
Maypole, and rebuked its votaries roundly, 
declaring in plain words that if there was not 
better walking he would make " their Merry- 
mount a woful mount for them." Thereupon 
the colonists mended their ways and changed 
the name of their abiding place to Mount 
Dagon, a name that endured not. 

A romantic interest has always clung to 
these Maypole days at Merrie-mounte. Haw- 
thorne gives a highly fanciful account of them 
in " Twice Told Tales." But in spite of all the 
glamour that such a master of romance may 
weave into this episode of scarlet and tinsel, 
one will never regret that the victory was 
with Standish and Endicott. Perhaps I may 
close aptly with the words of Governor Brad- 










C/iiist Church Fountain. 



Quincy. 71 

ford : " But I have been too long aboute so 
unworthy a person and so bad a cause." 

To many the old Adams houses, birth- 
places of the presidents, will be the most in- 
teresting sights in Quincy. To reach them 
we must return to the Square, and follow 
Hancock Street in the other direction. It is 
worth while to examine Christ Church on the 
way. Before it stands a curious drinking 
fountain, surmounted by a cross and lantern, 
and decorated with scriptural texts and a 
representation of our Saviour. It is as use- 
ful as it is picturesque, and recalls the wayside 
shrines of the old world. 

Turn to the right from Hancock Street 
opposite this fountain. Notice on the left 
the old churchyard of Christ's Church in 
Braintree, New England (for Quincy was a 
part of Braintree), where stood the first house 
of worship from A.D. 1727 to a.D. 1833, and 
are buried the founders of the church and 
many of their descendants. 

The car tracks guide us straight to the two 
■old Adams houses. They stand on a little 



72 The Pilgrim Shore. 

delta of desolate land by the side of the road, 
close together. Little ground has been 
spared them, and that is barren. Rude stiles 
and a few shrubs soften slightly the grimness 
of the John Adams House, standing gable end 
to the street and facing its junior. In it 
John Adams was born. It has been restored 
by the Adams Chapter of the D.A.R. 

The other old house, with a picturesque 
leanto and well-sweep, is called the cottage. 
It was " the home of John and Abigail 
Adams. Here goodwife Abigail wrote let- 
ters that time has not dimmed. John Ouincy 
Adams was born here in 1767," The house 
was built in 1716, and was restored in 1896 
by the Ouincy Historical Society. Both the 
houses are open in the afternoon, and may be 
seen for a fee. 

Our sincere thanks and gratitude arc due to 
the societies which have rescued these old 
landmarks from destruction. It is a pity that 
the surroundings are so singularly incongru- 
ous and unfortunate. However, both the 
houses are exceedingly interesting inside and 







-.^>-" ¥#, 



yt/^« Quincy Adams was born here. 



Ouincy. 75 

out, and if they seem forlorn and woe-begone, 
clinging dejectedly to their foundations, I have 
no doubt that in time, when they have had a 
little garden care and the companionship of 
vine and flower and shrub, they will become 
more home-looking and seem a little less 
like relics. 

In Ouincy all roads lead to the Square, and 
so we must return there to resume our jour- 
ney. This time we take the broad road be- 
hind the Stone Temple, at the side of which 
stands the Crane Memorial. This fine build- 
ing was given to the city by and is so named 
after Thomas Crane, a Ouincy stone-cutter 
who coined a fortune out of his town's granite 
ledges. One needs not to be told that it was 
designed by Richardson. His thumb-marks 
are all over it. How strikingly different is 
this Romanesque style to anything else in New 
England ! But in our hodgepodge of styles 
nothing seems incongruous. The hall's in- 
terior, with its stately mantel, its oaken wains- 
coting, and dusky magnificence of stamped 
leather, is rich and fine and worth seeing. 



76 



The PilQ:rim Shore. 







u'^C;^- 



Along the level 
road to Weymouth 
there are occasion- 
ally glimpses of the 
bay and the thickly 
clustered cottages at 
Nantasket and Hull. 
At Quincy Point, un- 
der fine elms, is a group of old fashioned man- 
sions with great square chimneys whose rigid 
lines are softened by vines. Then you come 
to the bridge over Fore River, across which 
lies Weymouth. 



/o/i?t Adams House. 



^^^$<ii^^^f 



The v^ew is pretty only at high tide. Up 
the river are green hills, parti}' grove and 
orchard clad; down-stream black coal 
pockets, brown headlands, barren islands, 
a few old stranded wrecks, and hundreds of 
little cottages huddled together in seaside 
promiscuity. 

This bleak desolation was not when the 
Charity and the Swan sailed up the flood 
with the first settlers. Of the landscape in 
those da}'s Morton wrote, in his quaint de- 
lightful way, "When I had seriously consid- 
ered of the beauty of the place with all her 
fair indowments, I did not thinke that in all 
the knowne world it could be paralel'd. For 
so many goodly groves of trees; daint}' fine 



78 



The Pilerim Shore. 



hillucks, delicate faire large plaines, sweet 
cristall fountainesand cleare running streams, 
that twine in fine meanders throueh the 








The Fore River. 



meads, making so sweete a murmuring noise 
to heare as would even lull the senses with 
delight a sleepe." 

To this region then called Wessagusset 
came in 1622 Weston's colony, — a brawling, 



Weymouth. 79 

profane crew, " rude fellows made choice of at 
all adventures, " whom Governor Bradford 
considered unfit for honest men's company. 
As might have been expected, these roughs 
were soon in hot water. After robbing the 
Pilgrims, they squandered their own stores, 
and were soon at the mercy of the Indians, 
and became but little more than slaves to 
them. At menial tasks they worked for the 
savages, or wandered about the shore, half 
naked and half starved. 

But their misery bred only contempt in the 
hearts of their savage masters, who resolved 
to slaughter them. This they could have 
easily done, but they dreaded the punishment 
by the Pilgrims, which they knew was sure to 
follow. So they conspired with the tribes 
near by to massacre also the little colony at 
Plymouth. It was this conspiracy, as well as 
the danger menacing the miserables at Wey- 
mouth, that brought Standish here in 1623, 
resolved to deliver the colonists and punish 
the natives. 

The little Captain set out with only eight 



8o The Pilgrim Shore. 

men. His small force met open defiance. 
After a short parley with the Indians, Watta- 
wamat sprang before the others, shouting, 

"'Who is there to tight with the brave Wattawamat,' 
Then he unsheathed his knife, and, whetting the 

blade on his left hand, 
Held it aloft and displayed a woman's face on the 

handle, 
Saying, with bitter expression and look of sinister 

meaning : 
' I have another at home, with the face of a man on 

the handle ; 
By and by they shall marry : and there will be 

plenty of children ! ' 
Then stood Pecksnot forth, self-vaunting, insulting 

Miles Standish: 
While with his finger he patted the knife that hung 

at his bosom, 
Drawing it half from its sheath, and plunging it 

back, as he muttered, 
' By and by it shall see; it shall eat; ah, ha I but 

shall speak not ! 
This is the mighty Captain the white men liave sent 

to destroy us ! 
He is a little man ; let him go and work with the 

women ! ' " i 

1 Courtsliip of Miles Standish, Longfellow. 




VVaitawamat. 



Weymouth. 83 

But little did this boasting avail him, for 
with that very knife did Standish slay him 
in single combat. Wattawamat was also 
killed, and five others. 

Following the English custom, Watta- 
wamat's head was cut off, carried back to 
Plymouth by Standish, and set on a pike, 
there to scowl from the fortress church. 

Thus the conspiracy was defeated, and 
the colony was delivered of a great danger. 
" By ruthlessly murdering seven men," says 
Charles Francis Adams, " Standish re-estab- 
lished the moral ascendency of the whites, 
and so saved the lives of hundreds." 

With the Plymouth men departed what 
remained of Weston's colony, and " thus in 
failure, disgrace, and bloodshed ended the 
first attempt of a settlement at Weymouth."^ 

This was, next to Plymouth, the oldest 
settlement in Massachusetts. As early as 
1635 the Fore River was crossed by a ferry 
with rates established by law. It is not far 
from the bridge to Bicknell Square, where 
1 Charles Francis Adams. 



84 



The Pilgrim Shore. 



stands the old Bicknell homestead. Just 
beyond, perched above the State Road, is 




The Smith Parsonage. 

the old Smith parsonage, 
which was moved from its 
original site, and is much 
changed. In it Abigail 
Smith Adams \vas born, and here John 
Adams came a-courting. Her father, the vil- 
lage parson, frowned upon the future presi- 



Weymouth. 85 

dent's suit, and the neighbors even did not 
consider an Adams quite good enough for a 
Smith of Old Spain. But even in those 
times of strait-laced sordidness, love found 
the way, and the parson's daughter, with 
a will as strong as his own, became Mrs. 
Adams, and in time added to the glory of 
being a Smith by becoming the first lady 
of the land and the mother of a president. 
It is a tradition of the family that with her 
own hands she scrubbed the floor of her 
bedroom the afternoon before her eldest 
son, John Ouincy Adams, was born. 

This part of Weymouth is called Old 
Spain. Why or when it was so named there 
is not even a tradition to explain. It is 
neither ancient nor Spanish in appearance ; 
but a pretty village under branching elms, 
and bustling with New England thrift and 
neatness. 



Beyond Old Spain and the Back River, 
the road is long and lonesome, and hedged 
in by woods all the way to Hingham. But 
just before the town is entered, blue patches 
of its harbor show through the white birches. 
Up its winding channel in 1633 sailed the 
ship Diligent, the Mayflower of this settle- 
ment. As most of the newcomers came 
from Hingham in Norfolk, they named their 
new home after the old. 

Soon the quiet village green is reached, 
delta-like under great green elms, sur- 
rounded by old fashioned houses and a 
church with quaint belfry. At the right is 
the home of General Benjamin Lincoln. This 
distinguished Revolutionary ofificer rose to 
the rank of Major-General, and also served 
as Secretary of War. In the quiet Hingham 



Hingham. 



^1 




/ 



Home of General Lincoln. 



r 



streets he must have cut 

^.-"^ quite a figure. He was 

^ \-ery fat in his later years, 

making up in breadth 

what he lacked in height. He walked about 

with a tall cane ; his coat was blue with large 

gilt buttons ; and he wore a buff waistcoat 



The Pilorim Shore. 



'G 



and the small clothes of the period. He 
always wore Hessian boots, and an enormous 
cocked hat put the finishing touch of mag- 
nificence and dignity to his appearance. 

But all this grandeur was in his old age 
marred by a strange affliction. In his chaise, 
at table, in military council, even while stand- 
ing, he would fall asleep, sound and snoring. 
You may imagine what a fortress the family 
pew in the "Old Church" was to him, and 
how impregnable to the assaults of the 
preacher. 

Beyond the general's house, and high above 
the present road, is another Lincoln mansion, 
not quite so much altered. It still retains an 
antique look, and was once a roadside inn. 

The Lincolns of Hingham have always had 
a part in making the town's noblest history, 
and from this sturdy family have come some 
of the great men of the nation, foremost 
among them the martyred and great presi- 
dent, Abraham Lincoln. 

Close to the common is the village square, 
once called Broad Bridge, and where in old 




Major-Gcncral Lincoln. 



Hingham. 91 

days stood the stocks and pillory for evil- 
doers. From it leads Main Street, beautifully 
shaded by magnificent elms that droop over 
picturesque cottages and fine old mansions. 

Just beyond a grand old elm that towers 
over a quaint little home is the Derby Acad- 
emy, and in front of it, on a hill since levelled 
to grade the street, stood once the first church, 
erected in 1635. Surrounded it was by a 
" pallisado," but from its top no cannon 
frowned, as at Plymouth ; for a belfry rose 
there from the first and sent its brazen call 
to prayer into the depths of the dark forest. 

About its walls on the hillside were laid to 
rest the early dead. And here they reposed 
for two centuries in mouldering peace, when 
they were removed to the cemetery close by, 
and a monument was erected over them by 
the town in 1839. 

For forty-five years this rude " pallisadoed " 
temple answered every purpose, but by 1679 
the town had so outgrown it that it was agreed 
" to build a new meeting-house with all con- 
venient speed." 



92 The Pilgrim Shore. 

After much wrangling and great dispute, 
embroiling even the Governor and Magistrates 
at Boston, the present site was fixed upon, 
and there the church stands to-day, the oldest 
house of public worship in the original limits 
of the United States. 

The outside of the meeting-house must 
look to-day much as it did in the old time; 
but the interior has suffered many changes 
from time to time. At first the inside was all 
open to the roof, against which the rafters 
and braces drew a stout oaken tracery. There 
was no plaster, and the walls were clapboarded 
inside and out. There was a gallery on one 
side and also at both ends. In that at the 
east sat the maids, glancing shyly across to 
the opposite gallery, where, safely corralled 
together, sat their longing swains. On the 
oaken seats and benches below sat the married 
folk and elders, the men on one side and the 
women on the other. Well filled the seats 
were, for it cost a peck of corn to stay away 
from service, or to leave before it was finished. 
About everything really old has gone, 



Hinorham. 



o 



except the pulpit; but the church to-day has 
a proper air of staid old-fashioned dignity. 

One curious feature is the bell-rope, dang- 
ling over the middle of the central aisle. In 
Mr. Gladstone's church at Hawarden, the 
belfry is also over the centre of the edifice, 
but the bells are rung from the ceiling above ; 
still there 's a trap-door beneath them, and 
through it I have caught comical glimpses of 
the legs of the ringers, and their vigorous 
genuflections. 

It makes one shiver to think that in 1792 
it was voted " to take down the meeting-house 
and build a new one." Fortunately this pur- 
pose was abandoned, and so the antique treas- 
ure, consecrated for so many years to the 
worship of the Almighty, has been preserved 
to us, a holy inheritance. 

Close by the church, in the oldest part of 
the cemetery, is the tomb of Major-General 
Lincoln, and near by is a monument to the 
first settlers of Hingham, whose bones were 
removed here from the old palisaded church- 
yard. 



94 



The Pilgrim Shore. 



Beyond, in the modern part of the grounds, 
is a fine monument to tlie "'reat war crovernor 



^•■.*''l%f|^v';' 




An Antique Treasure. 

of Massachusetts, John Al- 
bion Andrew, and an obelisk 
of granite in memory of the 
men of Hingham who died in the War of the 
Rebelhon. But no monument interested me 
more than that to Sergeant Peter Ourish, 
Youngest of all the town's volunteers, he died 



Hingham. 95 

of his wounds when only nineteen years old, 
after having fought in fifteen battles, many 
of them the fiercest and most bloody of all 
that cruel war. 

From the terraced hills here, there is a good 
view over the harbor, where occasionally a 
lonely coaster may be seen beating in or out 
the harbor. Once the little port was all 
activity, for a fleet of sixty sail of vessels hailed 
from here fifty years ago. Most of them 
were engaged in fishing, according to King 
James, an honest trade and the apostle's own 
calling. 

I regret that I cannot speak of the many 
other interesting things in Hingham, but must 
hurry on, calling attention as I leave the 
Square to the old Rev. Ebenezer Gay house. 
Perched high above the street, its walls vine- 
clad, and its old well half hidden under droop- 
ing boughs, it has the most interesting exte- 
rior of all in Hingham and an air of real 
antiquity. 

Between this old town and Nantasket, lies 
a lovely country, partly wooded, parti}' 



96 The Pilgrim Shore. 

marshland, bordering a little river that winds 
by great masses of purple rocks that hedge 
the cedared slopes. Suddenly, however, 
comes the glare, the noise, the dust, the con- 
tusion of " The Beach " Nantastcet. 



This has been a pleasure resort for over a 
hundred years. The oldest summer hotel, 
" The Sportsman," was the resort of Daniel 
Webster and other distinguished men. Until 
within thirty or forty years, however, there 
were few houses, and the beach stretched 
toward Hull, lonely, windswept, and barren, 
but with the dignity of the desert. Now it is 
littered with an illy-arranged assortment of 
hotels and cottages, between which electric 
trains screech and rattle. 

All sorts of entertainment are here pro- 
vided, including, according to a New York 
paper, " cultured clams, intellectual chowder, 
refined lager, and very scientific pork and 
beans." 

7 



98 The Pilgrim Shore. 

The beach retains its old Indian name, 
spelled in the early accounts Natasco or 
Nantascot. Three hills dominate the length 
of its fine long sweep, — Strawberry, Saga- 
more, and Allerton. These, as well as the 
plains at their base, were in the Pilgrim days 
heavily wooded. From them the seamen 
could have good timber to repair their 
weather-beaten ships and make long masts 
and yards. To-day not a forest tree remains, 
and it is worse than barren. 

The first settlement was probably where 
Hull now stands. Roger Conant was here 
then, and so was Isaac Allerton. The latter's 
name is kept in remembrance by Point 
Allerton, and that of his wife's family by the 
Brewster islands. From time to time Hull is 
referred to as an " uncouth place," or as hav- 
ing " a straggling people," so that we may 
infer that it was never very prosperous. 

Hull itself was named for the English town 
of that name in 1644. With one exception, 
it is the smallest township in the State, and 
until quite lately contained but a few people. 




' Ai necessary as church and /-reaching." 



Hull. 



lOI 



Its quota to the Revolution was but three 
men, and in the present century it could claim 
no more than twelve to eighteen votes. An 
old saying has it, " As goes Hull so goes the 
State." 

In the good old days when every one, from 
ministers and deacons down, considered flip 
and toddy inalienable rights, and as necessary 
as church and preaching, this town had but 
one tavern, and, despite such monopoly, this 
important institution " had custom barely 
sufficient to supply its venerable mistress 
with the necessaries of life." Perhaps, how- 
ever, it was not so much the lack of people, 
as their sobriety, that made such hard lines 
for the tavern's mistress ; for the men of Hull 
were early zealots in the cause of temperance, 
and as long ago as 1721 voted to allow no 
tavern to be kept within its limits. Thus 
they may have been the first " no license 
town " in the country. 

The history of Hull is not the history of its 
cluirches, and the succession of its ministers, 
so much as is the case with other towns ; for 



I02 The Pilgrim Shore. 

it seems to have been without either for great 
lengths of time. Its small size, and the rigor 
of life there, would have deterred any one 
but a real follower of Christ and his fisher- 
men apostles from settling within its tiny 
borders. 

A jocular writer in 1848 declared that 
every townsman of Hull had a religion of his 
own, and that in the small population were 
to be found, " a slight sprinkling of Mormons 
and Latter Day Saints, as well as Univer- 
salists, Baptists, Calvinists, Methodists, Uni- 
tarians, Catholics, and Sculpinarians (a sect 
who worship the dried head of a sculpin)." 
This diversity of opinion he ventures to put 
forth as the reason why no minister was then 
settled there ; but he adds that the last one 
was fairly starved out, one who when he 
settled there was a corpulent man, but who 
left the town to accept a situation as a living 
skeleton. But if the town had no minister, it 
had no lawyer and no doctor ; so you see it 
must have been spared much evil. 

Little is left of the old time. Here and 



Hull. 



103 



there an old square chimney 
rises among the hodgepodge of 
Queen Anne accretions to the 
old cottages, about all that is 
left except the great shady 
elms and the hollyhocks that, 
if they do not look old in their 
fresh beauty, still look old- 
fashioned. 

Hull's greatest antiquit}-, 
perhaps, is the ruins of the old 
fort on Telegraph Hill. In it 
there used to be a well with the 
extraordinary depth of ninety 
feet. Years ago, when Boston 
had a merchant marine under 
the Stars and Stripes, its in- 
coming vessels were signalled 
from this eminence to the city 
by the use of one hundred and 
twelve flags, one for each ship- 
ping merchant. It is well 
worth one's time to climb this 
hill for the maenificent view 




1, 1 ^tg^^.TV 




Hollyhocks. 

it commands. 



I04 The Pilgrim Shore. 

The harbor, its approaches, Hght-houses, forts, 
islands, and shipping stretch inland to the 
smoke -wreathed, dome-crowned city; the 
North Shore dwindles away toward Cape 
Ann; the level sea fills all the east; and 
southward lies the curving Pilgrim Shore to 
which we are bound. 




(jOnA55ET. 



The next town is Cohas- 
set, and it is most pleasantly 
reached by the famous Jeru- 
salem Road, which, though 
not as beautiful as its rival 
- along the North Shore, is 
still very fine, A perfect 
road-bed, it winds along the 
shore, at first far from the sea 
and out of view of it. Across 
the little bay between it and the 
Bay, there stretches a long and 
narrow strip of rocks, once dot- 
ted with thickets of bayberry and wild rose. 
Now this is covered by small crowded cot- 
tages that lift a ragged line of rooftrees and 
gables of mixed paint diversified. 



io6 The Pilgrim Shore. 

Over the curving road-bed go luxurious 
carriages with lady whips and hveried servants, 
landaus and barouches ghttering in the sun 
and briUiant as if with flowers from the 
dresses and parasols of their occupants, — all 
the pomp of affluence in fact. Meanwhile 
the air is vexed with the rumble and screech 
of plebeian trolley cars across the river. 

Overhanging the road, the great rounded 
shoulders and ramparts of the hills have been 
smoothed off, and the hollows and slopes 
coaxed into graded, shaven lawns. From the 
heights, the villas of the great folks look over 
the ragged sky line of cheap cottages to the 
sea. 

But when Green Hill and the terminus of 
the electric road is passed, the road in rising 
sweeps toward the shore that tumbles to the 
breakers. Patches of golden and emerald 
green gleam amid its rocky buttresses, gray 
white or ruddy and tawny. The ledges and 
bowlders are fringed by bronzes and browns 
of clinging seaweed, and these sombre tones, 
in whose shadows purple lingers, are in turn 



Cohasset. 



107 



edged by the dazzling contrast of supreme 
white, the flashing foam of surf. 
Bordering the road are the 




Tlie Jerusalem Road. 

" cottages," some of them stately mansions 
of stone or rambling composites, examples 
of what we call colonial architecture. Their 
smooth lawns, broken here and there by 
upheaved edges, are gay with scarlet gera- 



io8 The Pilofrim Shore 



&' 



niums, rich green woodbine, and breeze- 
silvered poplars, all shining and glinting 
under the sea-sunshine. 

Where else, indeed, are the sunbeams so in- 
tense or color so brilliant? Are not flowers 
always brighter by the sea? Do not the 
fluttering flags, even, reveal tints gayer and 
fresher than any they ever unfold elsewhere? 

It soon becomes a pageant — this journey. 
Seaward, the foreground is dotted with islets 
and flecked by white sails. Farther out, a 
great ocean steamer tears along, pushing 
before her a mass of snowy foam, and trailing 
behind long wreaths of smoke ; slow barges 
crawl behind pufiing tugs; coasters spread 
rusty sails; and be}'ond all lies the dim pur- 
ple of the North Shore, beneath the graded 
blue of our clear New England sky, glorious 
with the rolling cumuli of summer. 

There is one beauty spot where the road 
turns away from this water view by low walls 
and thin screens of sumachs and locusts, till it 
winds in shade between hedges that flaunt 
gorgeous trumpet-flowers, reddening rose- 



Cohasset. 109 

hips, and yellow honeysuckle, where the air is 
all perfumed from the masked flower gardens 
whose galleries of phlox and hollyhocks rise 
in tiers to the leaf-screened verandas. 

Where the shade ends, the hedges frame a 
picture of rocky islets and blue bays, curving 
to purple pebbly beaches. Landward, the 
dusty dwindling road bounds calm ponds, 
d}^ed gray and green by long drawn reflec- 
tions of lichened rock and leafy trees. Here 
and there only is the smooth mirror dashed 
with deepest blue, where the sea-breeze frets 
its surface. 

How astonishing is the beauty of very 
common things ! Here on the edges of these 
ponds, where the water had receded, I noticed 
an edge of stagnant growth which, under the 
sunbeams, shone transfigured with all the 
lustrous tones of copper and verd-antique. 
The beauty of color could be matched only by 
tlie shimmering reflections of antique Phoeni- 
cian glass. Heightened was this strange 
loveliness by the bordering turquoise and 
azure of the reflected sk\'. 



iio The Pilgrim Shore. 

Piled high along the shore, bleaching 
wrecks, with timbers wrenched and shat- 
tered, attest the fury of that great November 
storm in ninety-eight, when the waters rose to 
a height never known before. During that sad 
night, from one of the vessels cast away be- 
yond Little Harbor, came some sailors up the 
road in search of aid for their injured ship- 
mates. When at last the doctor was found, 
and they were returning with him, however, 
they discovered to their dismay that all com- 
munication with the ship was cut off; for the 
sea was breaking, with deep violence, right 
over the road beyond Kimball's Point, and 
that where they had that morning passed dry- 
shod was become impassable, smothered in 
white foam. 

But in summer weather this road stands 
well above the sea, and beyond from the 
beach is more like a private drive than a 
highway, for it is lawn-edged and winds 
through groves till the surf's sound is lost, 
and one hears only the roll of carriages and 
the clamp of hoofs. 



Cohasset. 



1 1 1 



And when the Cohasset River is crossed, 
where it winds through rocky gates and 
" creeps into the deep sea's gulfy breast," a 
mile of inland road, through shady woods, 
leads to Cohasset village, directly to the 




Cohasset River. 

sequestered common. There in the middle 
stands a quaint little church, and all about 
hundreds of beautiful elms. Over all broods 
the staid New England quiet. 

The town was, until 1770, a precinct of 
Hingham, and reference is once made to it, in 
the records of the General Court, as " Cohas- 
set alias Little Hin<jham." 



112 The Pilgrim Shore. 

Its name comes from the Indian word 
Ouonahassit, meaning a long place of rocks. 
And it is aptly named. According to 
Thoreau, " It is the rockiest shore in Massa- 
chusetts — hard sienitic rocks which the 
waves have laid bare, but have not been able 
to crumble. It has been the scene of many 
a shipwreck." 

One of the most notable of these disasters 
was that of the brig St. John from Galway, 
wrecked on the Grampus Rocks, October 7, 
1849. On board of her were many Irish 
emigrants, — men, women, and children, — 
and fully a hundred of them lost their lives. 
A graphic description of the sad scenes after 
the storm is given by Thoreau in his " Cape 
Cod." 

Drake says that, of the recovered bodies, 
twenty-seven were buried in the village grave- 
yard. This quiet old burying-place is not 
far from the common, and backs upon the 
Old Harbor, from which it is separated by a 
fringe of melancholy blasted pines. It is not 
so well kept but that a "sweet neglect" 




Cohasset Common. 



Cohasset. 



115 








" Through the v'lUageV 

seems to brood over its mouldering stones and 
the liberty of its wandering vines and weeds. 
Simple and natural it is in its half decay, but 
lonesome even in the sunlight. 



Ii6 



The Pilofrim Shore. 



A pleasant street leads 
through the village to ^X^^^^'^fe^^^ 

the harbor and across 



the bridge to Govern- 








^ 



" Their home on the little hill." 



ment Island, where live the keepers of Mi- 
not's Ledge Light and their families. Li 
their home on the little hill many an anxious 
heart must beat when gales sweep the coast, 



Cohasset. 



117 



and the white shroud of the winter night is 
seared by the trail of appeaHng rockets; 
many an anxious eye must peer forth at 
dawn to that lonely beacon rising beyond the 
breakers in the dark, wrathful sea. 

By day its grim gray tower, and at night 
its flashing lamp rise in warning over one of 
the most treacherous stretches of sand and 
shoal and reef and rock that ever fed with 
wreck and corpse the cruel sea. 

The present structure replaces one built 
on iron piles which was swept away in the 
great April storm of 185 1. The present 
granite shaft is nearly a hundred feet high. 
The lower forty feet are of solid masonry, 
dovetailed and bolted together, and into the 
reef below the sea, until it is almost a part of 
the ledge itself. It took years to complete 
the foundations alone, for there were in all 
the long twelve months but a few hours 
when any work could be done. On Govern- 
ment Island the great blocks were fashioned, 
and the places of construction may still be 
seen. 



ii8 The Pilo-rim Shore. 



fc> 



Looking down the river, there 's a fine view 
of level stretches, rock-dotted, to Hominy- 
Point and the sea. Inland, the river winds 
by rocks and cottages toward North Scituate, 
and is called the Gulf. 

Captain John Smith was the first European 
explorer to enter this harbor, and it was he 
who first recorded its name, Quonahassit, on 
the page of history. Here he had a quarrel 
with the Indians, and, as he sailed through 
the narrow harbor mouth, the savages, am- 
bushed (probably at Hominy Point), bade him 
a revengeful farewell with a shower of arrows. 

Of all the old houses in Cohasset I think 
that the most interesting is the old Lincoln 
home on South Main Street, near the Scituate 
line. It was built by the pioneer Mordecai 
in 1 71 7, for his son Isaac, of whom Abraham 
Lincoln was a lineal descendant. Standing 
as it does on a little hill, the old house com- 
mands a delightful view. Near by, the street 
is lined by great elms, and through their dark 
shade gleams the blue winding river and the 
lush sreen level meadows. 



Cohasset. 



119 



If paint ever defiled the old homestead, all 
trace of it has long since gone, and the gray 




The old Lincoln House, 

lichened shin«jles are 
worn as thin as paper 

and honeycombed by time. 

As one stands here in its quiet precincts, 

there comes through the rustlinc: elms the 



I20 The Pilo;rim Shore. 



t>' 



monotonous beat of the mill near by on Bound 
Brook, so-called because it was the boundary 
between the colonies. Indeed, the brook and 
its power was Mordecai Lincoln's greatest 
wealth, and the real reason of his settling here. 
His house and the old mill are both gone, but 
they stood about where the new buildings are. 
The proverb says that the mill will never 
grind with the water that has past. Whether 
Mordecai disproved this saying or not, I do 
not know ; but it is on record that he man- 
aged, by an ingenious arrangement of dams, 
to make the brook work six days a week, de- 
spite the fact that by any ordinary arrange- 
ment it could have furnished power for but 
one third of that time. It must have been 
a sort of triple expansion. By trade the in- 
genious miller was a blacksmith; but he was 
able to turn his hand to most anything, hav- 
ing what New Englanders call faculty. One 
should, if possible, visit the interior of Isaac's 
house, for it is charmingly antique. I re- 
member, with much pleasure my visit there, 
and the kindly courtesy of its owner, still a 
Lincoln. 




The shore of Scituate, the next Pilgrim 
town, is far from rocky; indeed it is one long 
stretch of sand that is raised in places to low 
cliffs. The level shallows outlying these 
beaches are as dangerous to vessels as the 
granite tusks of Cohasset, and many a ship's 
bones have bleached upon the long curved 
reaches of their wastes. 

The great November storm of 1898 was 
felt in all its force here, and there remains on 
Scituate Beach a curious reminder of its fury. 
This is the wreck of the pilot boat Columbia, 
now converted into a sort of Peggotty sum- 



122 



The 


: Pil; 


grim Shore 


('' 




^1/ 




V 

I 


'A^ 


1r^ 






Fourth Cliffy Scituate. 

mer home. She 
was driven ashore 
here during that 

terrible night, and crashed down upon a sea- 
side cottage. All on board of her were lost. 
That night the sea not only littered the 



Scituate. 123 

beaches with wreckage, but it also swept the 
sands themselves about, undermining here, 
building up there, or boldly cutting channel 
or bay in the shore itself, thus making mar- 
vellous changes. Hundreds of acres of valu- 
able lands were submerged or ruined in 
places, while in others, from the sea's bottom, 
wide fields were lifted above the waters. 
Through the beach, just south of the Third 
ClifT, in a few hours, it cut a channel to the 
North River nearly two hundred feet wide 
and sixteen feet deep at low water, besides 
swallowing up two islands that lay in the 
course of its fury. On one of these islands 
four young men were camping out ; they 
were all lost. 

Back from its beaches, Scituate stretches in 
flat plains with only an occasional hill. In 
years gone by, these sparsely wooded lands 
were shaded by great groves of black walnut. 
But none of them remain to-day, the last one, 
a giant three feet in diameter, fell before the 
woodman's axe in 1820. 

Scituate, called so from Satuit Brook,, was 



124 The Pilgrim Sliore. 

settled 'tis said, by " Men of Kent" in 1628, 
and in growing it drew new blood from both 
the Pilgrims and the Puritans, lying as it did 
between the Republic and the Commonwealth. 
In the latter part of the seventeenth century, 
this old town was the richest in the colony. 
Now it has, as it was described fifty years 
ago, '* the appearance of stillness and retire- 
ment," One long street borders the meadow, 
through which runs the estuary that forms 
a harbor, safe, but difficult of access and 
emptied by the tides. Seaward, across green 
levels, is the sandy bulwark that keeps off the 
ocean. Strewn from end to end is this 
hummocky beach with the paraphernalia of 
" mossing," for that is the principal occupa- 
tion of the people to-day. A few years ago 
Scituate and the immediate coast furnished 
all the Irish moss used in the whole country, 
except what was imported from Ireland. 
When gathered, it is as green as any weed. 
It is then washed in large tubs, and afterward 
bleached and dried in the sun. 

Of all the places in Scituate, the most inter- 







T/te Street, Scitualc Harbor. 



Scituate. 127 

esting to many is '• The Old Oaken Bucket " 
homestead. It is close to the raihvay station 
on a pretty little country road. At one side 
of the way a narrow path winds, grass-fringed. 
Crimson hardhack, yellow false indigo, 
yarrow, white and pink, bespangle its borders, 
and over all these nod the broad panicles of 
the Queen Anne's lace. A pleasant walk it 
is crossing close by the railway over the dam 
between 

" The wide spreading pond, and the mill that stood 
by it." 

The first mill on this site was erected in 
1646, but before that time there had been a 
windmill on the Second Cliff. 

All the way, on either hand, lie the orchards, 
the meadows, and the deep-tangled wildwood, 
so dear to the heart of the poet. 

The site of the old homestead is on the 
Northy place, at the right not far from the 
pond, and over its precincts the ancient well- 
sweep still lifts its slanting sign of promise. 
There, shadowed by woodbine and lilacs, in 
the old well the water, " emblem of truth," 



128 The Pilgrim Shore. 

still swells crystal clear, and as delicious as 
ever. The " old oaken bucket" itself is rep- 
resented by a successor bravely bound with 
brass, — a gift from a distant city. 

As one stands here in the quiet level land- 
scape, one can realize with what longing the 
heartsick author of the touching song looked 
back to the peace of the old home. From the 
cares, regrets, and disillusions of the city, his 
fanc}' turned sadly back to his light-hearted, 
hopeful childliood. 

He, Samuel Woodworth, w^as a printer and 
journalist, and, like so many of his trade at 
that time, was a great wanderer and quite a 
' Bohemian." Like most men of that sort, 
he suffered many vicissitudes of fortune. It 
was while he was an editor in the city of New 
York that he wrote the song which is his only 
claim to public remembrance. 

It is said that the inspiration came to him 
in a popular bar-room. He had just taken a 
drink of cognac, and as he set down his glass 
he declared that it was the finest drink in 
the world. 














vr. 







" 77/'^ ;«/// f/itjf stood by it." 



Scituate. 131 

" There you are mistaken," said one of 
his comrades, " remember the old oaken 
bucket and the clear cold water of the old 
well." 

At this reminder, tears rushed to his eyes, 
and he left the room. He returned to his 
desk, and, with a heart overflowing with 
the recollections of innocent childhood, he 
quickly set down the words that have be- 
come so dear to many others. 

But peace has not always been the lot 
of Scituate, for in King Philip's War nine- 
teen houses and barns were burned by the 
Indians, and terror spread through its pre- 
cincts. Right here, about the mill and the 
Northy farm, a savage fight occurred. 

On the day of the attack there sat in the 
old Northy farmhouse. Dame Ewell, alone 
except for her grandson, John Northy, who 
slept beside her in his cradle. As she 
looked out of the windows toward Coleman 
Heights, she saw the savages running down 
toward the valley. Thinking only of alarm- 
ing the garrison, she rushed from the house 



132 The Pilgrim Shore. 

without ever thinking of the baby. But, 
in the midst of the battle, she remembered 
him, and returned stealthily amid its dangers, 
found the httle one peacefully sleeping, and 
carried him to a place of safety. 

Perhaps the red men had some just cause 
against the men of Scituate, for in the early 
days the colonists had not hesitated to 
make bondsmen of their savage brothers 
on various pretexts. Later on, negroes were 
possessed by all the wealthy families, and 
slavery left perhaps a deeper stain on Scit- 
uate than upon any other town of the 
colonies. 

But if the town has not been always so 
peaceful, neither has it been ever so inactive, 
for once it was a busy, bustling place with 
two harbors, — Scituate Harbor, already 
mentioned, and the New Harbor, as the old 
North River near its mouth was called. 

This river was once lined with ship-yards, 
to which the tide rose and fell. " Now," 
says Daniel E. Damon, historian of the 
town, " its portals are closed to the passage 







f^-^^^^ 






The " Old Oaken Bticket. 



Scituate. 



135 



of vessels, the ship-yards are all gone, and 
where once was heard the sound of axe, 
adze, and hammer, all is still, and the placid 
stream sleeps unbroken by any passing keel. 




" The placid stream sleeps.'' 

Its beauty still remains, enhanced, perhaps, 
by the fact that the obstructions at its mouth 
keep it always bank-full. Its history is 
largely the history of ship-building and 
builders. Their achievements bred amongst 



136 The Pilgrim Shore. 

them naval heroes and patriots." Here, in 
1773, was built the ship Columbia that 
gave its name to the mightiest river that, 
flows into the Pacific. 

It was into this tranquil, landlocked water 
that the sea tore the deep channel already 
mentioned, which connected again the river 
with the ocean, after many years of separa- 
tion. Between this new channel and the 
old mouth is stretched the long length of 
the fine beach that the Indians called Hum- 
arock. Once a peninsula, it is now an 
island five miles long and one thousand yards 
broad. 

Along its crest I saw other and melan- 
choly witnesses of the power of that great 
November storm. High on its pebbly ridges, 
bleaching and mouldering in sunshine and 
rain, lay the great timbers of many a wreck. 
Splintered and twisted were the great beams 
of oak, and, wrenched from vessels' sides, 
among these timbers, great strips torn bodily, 
and now decaying, all in rusty tones of black 
and red, here and there enriched by gilded 



Scituate. 



137 



carvings, remnants of former parade, but 
all slowly yielding to the attrition of wind 
and sand and weather. The white rimmed 
ports that once let in the light and breeze 




On Hitviarock Beach. 



to cosy cabins, now stare skyward like the 
glazed eyes of a drowned man, — dead eyes 
indeed. 

This coast is not so stuffed with legend 
as the North Shore, for Pilgrim land was 
never the home of superstition. A certain 
amount of that, and a great deal of willing 
credulity, as well as imagination, are neces- 
sary to the growth of such wonderful and 



138 The Pilgrim Shore. 

generally gruesome tales as linger still on 
the other side of the Bay. Not even witch- 
craft itself was able to fasten its clutches on 
this community, although the elders, follow- 
ing the example of all Christendom, took 
the precaution to pass laws against it, and 
even provided for the punishment and ex- 
ecution of witches. 

Right here in Scituate it was that this con- 
tagious error first broke forth, and right here 
it was stamped out forever in the Pilgrim 
Republic. 

It seems that one Mistress Dinah Sylvester 
of this town declared, with many sacred oaths, 
that she had seen her neighbor, Goodwife 
Holmes, in conversation with the devil. The 
fiend in this case, so she averred, came not in 
horns and cloven feet, but appeared in the 
form of a bear with whom, the accuser de- 
clared, Mistress Holmes deported herself in a 
way unbecoming both to a Christian and to 
a bear. 

To this accusation Goodman Holmes, who 
stood stoutly by his wife and her good 



Scituate. 139 

name, replied in a sensible way by a suit for 
slander. 

In those days any one charged with witch- 
craft stood in deadly peril, and it is doubtful if 
in any other Christian community at that time 
would the magistrates have shown so much 
common sense and simple justice; for after 
hearing the case in a thorough and dignified 
manner, as befitted its gravity, they found 
Dame Sylvester guilty of slander, and ordered 
her to be publicly whipped, or to pay Mr. 
Holmes ;^ 5, or to publicly confess her sin and 
to pay Mr. Holmes his costs and charges. 
As may be supposed, she chose the course 
cheapest, both to her purse and person, for to 
such an one it was little abasement to acknow- 
ledge herself a slanderer and backbiter. 
Thus was the delusion of witchcraft warded 
off for a time by honest men. 

But sixteen years later, another attempt was 
made, and again in Scituate. Mary Ingham 
was denounced for having bewitched one 
Mehitable Woodworth, affecting her with vio- 
lent fits, and bereaving her of her senses by 



140 The Pilgrim Shore. 

the " help of the devil in a way of witchcraft 
or sorcery." This black charge Goodwife 
Ingham denied, and put herself " on trial of 
God and the Country 1 " Then a jury of 
freemen, presided over by Governor Josiah 
Winslow, rendered the only just verdict, but 
at variance with the spirit of the age, — the 
just verdict of " Not Guilty. " To them all 
honor, these clear-headed freemen, for with 
this case ended all attempt to inoculate the 
minds of the Pilgrims with the dread dis- 
ease that so oppressed and shamed other 
peoples. 

And to this poverty of tales of witches and 
wizards we must add the dearth of legends 
horrific, — no ghosts, no " shrieking woman, " 
no spectre leaguers, stone-throwing devils, 
no, not even a sea serpent. Indeed, the 
traditional stories are mostly pleasant ones 
of historic persons or events, and as simple as 
the people, often as quaint. As an instance, 
let me quote the story of an old will, in which 
one provision was, "To my wife Frances, one 
third of my estate during her life, also a gentle 



Scituate. 



141 



horse or mare, and Jemmy the Negur shall 
catch it for her." 

One who has not travelled the roads that 
lead to Plymouth knows not in what a fair 
<:ountry the Pilgrims settled. Too apt are we 



J?<^^^* 




" And Jemmy tlie IVegur sliall catch It for hery 



always to think only of the bleak and dismal 
shore on which they landed. There were 
highways even then. To be sure, they were 
but Indian trails, but, though lonely, they 
were lovely, — a sylvan loveliness, strange to 
the newcomers. Unlike the hedged lanes of 
Old England, or the dyked paths of Holland, 
were these forest ways through long woods of 



142 The Pilgrim Shore. 

pine and shadow. But now the way is bared 
to the sky, and is bound by hedges, not of 
clipped thorn and holly, however, as in 
Devon or Dorset, but by that charming nat- 
ural screen which of itself springs up along the 
gray stone boundaries of New England fields, 
wilful, wayward, but beautiful. 




Thus bordered, winds the road to Marsh- 
field, an old town that, as has been truly 
said, shares with Plymouth the interest that 
attaches to the early home of the Pilgrims. 
Until 1641 it was a part of Duxbury, when it 
was set apart and called Green's Harbor or 
Rexham. 

The road there from Scituate parallels the 
shore, though not near it, and soon after 
crossing Little's Bridge, where was the old 
Indian Ferry, later called Doggett's Ferry, 
tortuous Snake Hill is climbed. From its top, 
one takes the first glimpse of Pilgrim Land, 
a grand view over Brant Rock, and the inter- 
vening valleys and marshlands that give the 



144 



The Pilgrim Shore. 



town its name. Saliently stands the monu- 
ment on Captain's Hill, and far in the distance 
is the blue ridge of Manomet. 




On the old White estate. 



Near by, close to the South River, and at 
the foot of a wild rough lane, is the old White 
estate. Here Peregrine White, the first child 
born to the colony, raised his roof-tree. Here 
he brought his bride, and settled on the land 
given him by his stepfather, Governor Wins- 



Marshfield. 145 

low. Here he lived for many years, years of 
toil and of honors, for he held many offices in 
the service of the people, and was twice 
chosen a deputy to the General Court. At 
a green old age, fourscore and three, he 
passed away, and was buried, it is said, by 
the side of his mother, who was the first 
bride of the colony, in the ancient burying- 
ground. 

This estate remained in the possession of 
his descendants for six generations, until the 
death of Miss Sybil White in 1884. 

The present house is a low ceiled cottage, 
very modern in appearance from the front, 
but inside it bears evidence of great age in 
parts. It is said to rest on the original sills, 
and to contain many of the rough-hewn 
beams, all spiked with hand-made nails. 

Like the lusty Peregrine, who was a fine 
type of a rugged race, most of the old settlers 
seem to have reached also an advanced age. 
The most notable example of long life in 
Marshfield was the grandson of Governor 
Carver, who died at the great age of 102. In 



146 The Pilgrim Shore. 

1775 he was at work in the field with his son, 
grandson, and great-grandson, the last of 
whom had in the house an infant son, — in 
all, five generations. 

The old burial-ground where Peregrine and 
nearly all the old settlers were buried, is well 
worth a visit. It is near the Webster place, 
and commands a view of the coast and sea ; 
for it crowns a little hill, wind-swept and 
almost treeless. The old, old stones, leaning 
and broken, have been worn by the weather 
into sharp tusks, and the inscriptions effaced. 

Here, as I have said, by the side of her son 
lies Susanna White Winslow, who came over 
in the Mayflower. That is the tradition, and 
there is no reason to disbelieve it. But her 
grave is unknown, as indeed are all the graves 
of the early settlers. To their memory, how- 
ever, a monument has been erected, and on 
it are inscribed their names. 

" The weary pilgrim slumbers. 
His resting place unknown; 
His hands were crossed, his lids were closed, 
The dust was o'er him strewn, 



Marshfield. 



147 



The drifting soil, tlie mouldering leaf, 

Along the sod were blown ; 
His mound has melted into earth, 

His memory lives alone." 

Near by, under a stone sculptured with a 
coat-of-arms, lies the remains of General 
Josiah VVinslow, half-brother to Peregrine 
White. He was the 
first n a t i V e-b o r n 
governor, and was 
buried at the ex- 
pense of the colony, 
as a mark of esteem 
and affection. 

And here, in this 
lonely burying- 
place, lies one with 
whose great fame 

the name of Marshfield must always be asso- 
ciated, — Daniel Webster. All that was mor- 
tal of him rests in the tomb of rough granite 
under a marble slab on which is cut his name 
and the epitaph composed by himself as he 
lay on his death-bed. 




The Winslo-w Arms. 



148 The Pilgrim Shore. 

In death he was not far removed from his 
loved home, for reached by a short lane 
through the woods and by the ponds is the 
spot where his mansion once stood. Unfor- 
tunately this old building was burned down 
over twenty years ago, and a modern house 
now stands on its site. 

It was here that the great statesman 
sought the quiet Hfe of a country home, amid 
that rural beauty he so dearly loved. His 
estate extended over two thousand acres, and 
on it he could enjoy to the utmost his taste 
for farming, gardening, and stock-raising. 
But the utilitarian side of a farmer's life was 
not all to him ; he cultivated as well its beau- 
tiful and ornamental part, for beside raising 
the usual crops and stock, he planted thou- 
sands of shade-trees and a great flower gar- 
den that stretched its bloom and fragrance 
between the mansion and the sea. To his 
smooth lawns proud peacocks lent their 
magnificence, and rare and curious birds 
and beasts added color and interest to the 
picture. 



Marshfield. 149 

Here, in 1852, amid the evidence of his 
labors, and surrounded by his family and 
friends, he passed away in hopeful resigna- 
tion. His last words were, " I still live." 










Proud Peacocks. 

And, indeed, for such noble souls there is no 
death. 

In his estate was contained part of an early 
Pilgrim domain, the " Careswell " of Edward 
Winslow, who is called the founder of Marsh- 
field. He came here from Plymouth about 
1637, and built what was then the finest house 
in the colonies. 

Like Standish, Winslow was of ancient and 
noble lineage, and he was the most accom- 
plished in worldly affairs of all the Pilgrims. 



150 The Pilgrim Shore. 

A Httle romance clings to his memory, for 
he was the first bridegroom among the new- 
comers. It was, however, not his first mar- 
riage, for he had been married in Holland, and 
his wife Elizabeth came with him in the May- 
flower. Her gentle nature was soon crushed 
by the rigors of that first dreadful winter in 
the New World, and she soon faded away 
amid the New England snows. His wedding 
in Plymouth was to the widow Susanna White, 
whose husband had died also during the 
winter. She had been a widow scarce twelve 
weeks, and Edward had mourned his wife but 
seven. 

Mistress White's son Peregrine, born in 
Provincetown Harbor, v/as the first child born 
to the colony. By her second union she 
had the honor, later, of being the wife of one 
governor and the mother of another. 

This marriage, according to the manner of 
the Pilgrims, was a civil contract presided 
over by a magistrate, " according to y^ laud- 
able custome of y^ Low-Cuntries," and 
" followed by all ye famous churches of 



Marshfield. 151 

Christ in these parts to this time, — An° : 
1646." 1 

Years afterward, when Winslow was on a 
mission to England, the cruel Archbishop 
Laud made this marriage, and Winslow's 
defence of the colonists' practice in such 
matters, a pretext for casting him into the 
Fleet Prison, where he languished for seven- 
teen weeks. 

Edward Winslow, besides being governor, 
served the colony in many positions of trust 
and honor, both in the New World and in the 
Old. It was he who brought the first cattle 
to Plymouth, but not in time, alas, as the poet 
would have us believe, to furnish the snow- 
white bull for the wedding procession of John 
Alden and Priscilla. 

His son Josiah, born of the second mar- 
riage and half-brother to Peregrine White, 
was the first native-born governor, and was 
commander-in-chief of the military forces of 
Pl}'mouth and the Bay colonies. 

A warlike temper was a family trait of the 

^ Bradford's History. 



152 The Pilgrim Shore. 

Winslows, down even to our time ; for from 

this stock was descended Rear-Admiral John 

Winslow, who sank the Alabama in the War 

of the Rebellion. And, to return to the old 

days, Governor Josiah's son John was a 

general in the Canadian Campaign of 1775. 

To his lot fell the execution of the harsh 

edict that drove into exile, from their secluded 

and peaceful homes by the Basin of Minas, 

the Acadian peasants of Grand Pre, to that 

" Exile without an end and without an example in 
story." 

So he figures in Longfellow's Evangeline^ 

and the poet describes him standing in the 

sacred shadows of the old church on the 

steps of the altar, — 

" Holding aloft in his hands, with its seals, the 
Royal commission," 

and then uttering the sentence which stripped 
the poor people of their homes and posses- 
sions, and drove them, wanderers, to foreign 
lands. 

Of course it was in the King's service that 
General John Winslow was called upon to- 




The old Winslow House. 



Marshfield. 155 

execute this cruel duty. But no one ever 
doubted the loyalty of the Winslovvs, and in 
fact their home was a stronghold of Toryism. 
Dr. Isaac Winslovv's house was the chief 
meeting-place of a society of loyalists, three 
hundred in number. 

This old Winslow house is interesting ; a 
grand old mansion in its day, it still retains 
an air of its past grandeur. Like many great 
houses of its time, it has a secret chamber, 
the entrance to which is by a sliding panel 
over one of the wide fire-places. 

It is related that one of the VVinslows, all 
of whom were staunch Tories, took refuge in 
this hiding-place after the house had been 
surrounded by a body of patriots. In the 
room connected with the secret place, there 
was at the time a woman in bed with a new- 
born child. The colonists, with a delicate 
forbearance, made but a superficial search of 
her apartment, and so the royalist in hiding 
escaped discovery. 

Like the old mansion, Marshfield itself bears 
not the glory of its earlier years. In the first 



156 The Pilgrim Shore. 

of this century 't was far busier, had more 
houses, and considerable ship-building. 

When it was first settled, it was called 
Roxham or Green's Harbor, and until 1641 
was a part of the next old Pilgrim town, 
Duxbury. 




On this old place there has fallen also 
the calm of age, for fifty years ago it was 
a bustling place. Its sons were familiar to 
China, Japan, and the Indies, and its ships 
were known round the world. 

Settled it was in 1630- 163 2, by men of 
honor and distinction in the civil and re- 
ligious history of the Pilgrims, and was 
called Duxbury, after Duxbury Hall, the 
seat of the Standish family in England ; for 
Miles Standish settled here, as did John 
Alden, his rival. 

Here they raised the roof-trees of their 
rough homes, which, like all the earliest 
ones, were surrounded by palisades to 
keep off wolves and savages. Fortified 



158 The Pilgrim Shore. 

cottages, they were lighted dimly by win- 
dows of oiled paper which oaken shutters 
made secure. On the ground floor was a 
large living-room with a kitchen, and gen- 
erally one bed-chamber. Under the gam- 
brel roof were two chambers. The lean-to 
roofs, which are still seen in many old houses, 
were of a later period. The walls were of 
stout square planks, and they were clap- 
boarded inside, as were also the partitions. 
The chimneys stood outside the walls, and 
were built, cob-fashion, of sticks and clay 
plaster. 

John Alden built his home in 1631, on 
the south side of Blue Fish River, near 
Eagle Tree Pond, ten years after his mar- 
riage to Priscilla, 

" The damsel Priscilla, the loveliest maiden of 
Plymouth." 

Here, the married lovers raised a good 
old-fashioned family of eleven children, and 
here they both died at an advanced age, 
crowned with honor and affection. Indeed, 
John Alden outlived all the signers of the 



Duxbury. i6i 

famous Mayflower compact, and was eighty- 
seven at the time of his death. Many posi- 
tions of honor and trust had he held in his 
long and useful life. 

Near the site of his dwelling now stands 
an Alden house, the third one on the 
estate. This one, two hundred and forty 
years old, was built by his grandson. It is 
of wood with a pitched roof and a massive 
chimney of brick laid in pasture clay. The 
interior is very interesting, and most of the 
rooms keep their old wainscoting of native 
pine. The house frame is all of hewn white 
oak. In it lives John Alden, the eighth, a 
lineal descendant of Standish's envoy to 
the arch Priscilla. John Alden, ninth, was 
killed by lightning while a lad. In con- 
nection with this cutting off of the line of 
John Aldens, it is a curious fact that the 
first death in all the colony from a light- 
ning stroke occurred in this very town in 
1658. 

The ride to Old Powder Point and the 
Beach is a very pleasant one. Here the 



1 62 The Pilgrim Shore. 

French cable from Brest is brought ashore, 
and it is more than interesting to visit the 
cable house; for no one with any imagina- 
tion could help yielding to the spell of this 
wonder, — this binding together of two con- 
tinents ocean-parted. One thinks with awe 
of the dark and silent depths through which 
these cables creep, and of the wonders of 
God there wrought. 

"Words, and the words of men, flicker and flutter 
and beat — 
Warning, sorrow and gain, salutation and mirth 
For a Power troubles the Still that has neither 
voice nor feet." 

In the presence of this every-day miracle 
of our time, we think of the gloom, deep as 
that of the ocean floor these cables traverse, 
which, in the Pilgrim days, shrouded even 
the commonest phenomena of life and nature. 
For in their day, the rainbow and the light- 
ning had not given up their secrets ; the 
pendulum and the barometer were unknown; 
the circulation of the blood and the attrac- 
tion of Gfravitation were undiscovered. Two 




The John Alden House. 



Duxbury. 165 

centuries and a half were to elapse before 
the invention of the telegraph. Considering 
the ignorance of the world at that time, we 
should marvel that the Forefathers were so 
little ruled by superstition and its sister, 
persecution. 

But in Duxbury the greatest interest at- 
taches to the life here of Miles Standish. 
The place of his dwelling is reached by the 
long and pleasant village street past many 
an old-fashioned mansion, and under many 
beautiful trees. 

On the way is the little burying-ground 
where his grave has recently been dis- 
covered. Elder Brewster is buried there 
too, it is believed, and many others of the 
first settlers. 

For years the last resting places of the 
most eminent of the Forefathers were un- 
known. It seems strange that the descend- 
ants of these Englishmen should so soon 
have lost the reverence and care for the dead 
which is so characteristic a trait of their 
nation, — that loving care of the graves that 



1 66 The Pilo^rim Shore. 



»' 



they have ahvays exhibited in the old church- 
yards of England. In the little English vil- 
lages, just such villages as the Pilgrims came 
from, the tiny God's Acres are close to the 
lives of the people, and they are kept sweet 
with flowers nearly all the year. In the long 
summer twilights the women and children 
may be seen carrying to them baskets of 
flowers from the cottage-gardens to beautify 
the graves. And there is something gently 
and sweetly sorrowful in the thought of 
slipping away into forgetfulness so near to 
the busy life of the village. Sharp is the 
contrast with the lonely graveyards of New 
England, so many of them remote and neg- 
lected. On lonely hillsides, or by the dusty 
road, uncared for and forgotten, the weeds 
and briers enwrap the headstones, and trees 
spring up between the graves. 

This burying-place, for example, was for 
years wholly neglected, a tangled waste of 
weeds choked it, and the cattle roamed over 
it. It is only within a few years that it has 
been cleared up and inclosed. While this 



^% 



/lr^\ 













The arch Prtscilla. 



Duxbury. 



169 



work was in progress, the workmen came 
upon some peculiarly shaped stones buried 
in the sand. Now there was a tradition that 
Standish's grave had been marked by two 











T/ie Grave of Mites Standis'i. 

pyramidal stones placed due east and west 
and about six feet apart. As the ones found 
answered to this description, very careful re- 
searches were made with the result, that three 
graves were finally uncovered there. In two 



I/O The Pilo^rim Shore 



& 



of them were the skeletons of two young 
women, one with abundant Hght brown hair, 
and the other with long tresses of a darker 
shade, and both with beautiful teeth. Be- 
tween these two, in the middle grave, was the 
skeleton of a man. Now the Captain's will 
requests that, should he die in Duxbury, that 
his body was " to laied as neare as conven- 
iently may bee to my two deer daughters, 
Lora Standish my daughter and Mary 
Standish my daughter in law." And there 
is every reason to believe that the grave of 
Miles Standish has been found. So the spot 
has been inclosed by a fort-like fence of 
stone, guarded at the corners by cannon. 

It is probable that John and Priscilla Alden 
also found a resting-place here, and in fact 
the oldest dated headstone bears the name of 
their son Jonathan, and many other Alden 
graves are here. 

A churchyard this spot originally was, and 
the site of the church, the first meeting-house, 
has been located and marked by a stone. 

Not far from the Captain's grave is the spot 



Duxbury. 171 

where his house once stood. Shelterhig it 
and high above it rises Captain's Hill crowned 
by the monument that has been erected to 
his memory. His house was burned down 
after his death, about 1666, but the cellar is 
still plainly marked. His dwelling must have 
been a very peculiar one, for it seems to have 
consisted of two wings converging like the 
stems of a V. When it was built the penin- 
sula on which it stands was thickly wooded, 
and over it roamed the deer and many a 
gaunt wolf besides, so the house was stoutly 
palisaded to protect it from savage beasts 
as well as men. At that time too it was 
generally believed that lions and other 
ferocious beasts infested the woods of the 
New World. " New England's Prospect " 
says, " Besides PHmouth men have traded for 
Lyons skinnes in former times." Whether 
this belief was held by the Pilgrims them- 
selves, I do not know, but the Puritans along 
the North Shore never doubted that " Lyons " 
to say nothing of demons, or even the evil- 
one himself, were lurking in the deep shadows 



172 The Pilgrim Shore. 

of the forests that swept backward from the 
shores of Cape Ann.- 

For even them, you may be sure the Cap- 
tain would have stood in little dread. His 
natural courage had been braced by a life of 
adventure in camp and field. A life that 
makes him the most picturesque character of 
all the Pilgrims. He has been ever rep- 
resented as a man of fiery temper, impetuous 
and masterful, " a little chimney soon heated," 
for he, like Caesar and Napoleon, was of small 
stature. But if he was quick, he was still " a 
friend of peace yet ever ready to fight for it 
and with little regard for the odds against 
him." He probably felt able to settle all 
disputes himself, for he was the rarest of liti- 
gants, — twice only did he appeal to the law, 
and then to resent the cruel treatment of his 
dumb animals. Once his dog was killed, and 
another time his sheep were worried by a 
neighbor's dog. These wanton acts the old 
soldier would not tolerate and in each case 
he secured the punishment of the off'enders. 

Also was he a friend of all good Indians, 



Duxbury, 



173 



especially of that " proper lustie man," that 
"man of accounte for his vallour & parts 
amongst y" Indians," Hobamock, the staunch 
















" A/ S/aiic/is/i's Fireside." 

friend of the Pilgrims. An intimate friend- 
ship existed between these two, and Hoba- 
mock spent his declining years well cared for 
at Standish's fireside. To this intimacy with 
the Indians the Captain owed, no doubt, his 



174 The Pilgrim Shore. 

skill in their language, for he surpassed all 
the other colonists in that respect. 

He was, too, the best linguist otherwise, — 
an accomplishment that had come to him in 
his roaming life, for when young he had held, 
under Elizabeth, a military commission to 
fight in foreign parts, and so had mastered 
French and Spanish, as well as Dutch and 
Flemish. 

It was probably during his campaigning 
against the cruel Spaniard that he met and 
was attracted to the Pilgrim Fathers. That 
he should have been so much their friend as 
to have gone with them across the sea to a 
savage land seems the more remarkable be- 
cause it is not clear that he shared their par- 
ticular faith. It has even been claimed that 
he was a Romanist, at least that he was a 
scion of a noble Catholic family. Of a long 
and noble line he really was, for on the roll 
of the Norman barons, made soon after the 
Conquest, appears the blazon of Thurston de 
Standish. This baron's son Hugh held an- 
cient Dokesbury (Duxbury) Hall in 1306. 




Miles Stand!.'.'!.. 



Duxbury. 177 

One John Standish was knighted by Richard 
II. for helping to kill poor Wat T}'ler in 
1 38 1. An Alexander Standish was knighted 
in 1482, and indeed the family was ever emi- 
nent in peace and war — generally the latter. 
The Reformation di\-ided the house against 
itself, and the Duxbury Hall branch went 
over to the Protestants, but the Standishs of 
Standish Hall clung faithfully to the church 
of Rome. 

It was from this latter branch that Miles 
Standish was descended ; and at his death 
he bequeathed to his son Alexander all his 
lands, " as heir apparent b}' lawful descent in 
Ormistic, Bousconge, Wrightington, Maud- 
sley, Newburrow, Cranston, and in the Isle of 
Man and given to me as right heir by lawful 
descent, but surreptitiously detained from 
me, my great grandfather being a second or 
younger brother from the house of Standish 
of Standish." 

Efforts have been made in this century by 
his descendants to unravel the secrets of his 
birth, and to prove the right of his claim. 



lyS The Pilgrim Shore. 

According to the commission given him by 
Queen Elizabeth, he must have been born in 
1584 or 1585. But the lawful evidence in 
England has been wilfully destroyed by oblit- 
erating all the entries for those dates in the 
parish register of Chorley, his native place. 
Moreover, by authority of an ancient law, the 
rector of Chorley has prevented any one 
from examining the records, and so stands 
guard for his patron, who, it is believed, holds 
the estates under a fraudulent title. Of im- 
mense value are the lands now, and of great 
extent, and yield each year an income of half 
a million dollars. 

It seems strange that Standish should have 
given up his brilliant prospects as a brave and 
skilful soldier, and his heirship to manorial 
rights and honors, to cast his lot with a hand- 
ful of almost friendless, expatriated religious 
enthusiasts, with whom it is even suspected 
that he was not wholly in sympathy. Why 
he should have sacrificed so much for no re- 
turn cannot be explained by what we know 
of his carlv life. It would seem that he must 



Duxbury, 



179 



hav-e had some private reasons of which the 
world knows nothing nor can ever know. 

Yet was he content with the slim honors 
and estate that his chivalrous devotion to his 








The Standish Cottage. 

new friends brought him. " No task was for 
him too difficult or dangerous, none too hum- 
ble or disagreeable. Great as a ruler over 
others, he was far greater as a ruler over 
himself No one ever more decidedly had a 



I So The Pilgrim Shore. 

mission, and none ever more nobly fulfilled 
it." 

When he died he left a few choice books 
that show him to have been a man of literary- 
tastes. Among them were three Bibles, just 
the number of his muskets. But this was not 
all his arsenal, for he left beside a fowling- 
piece, four carbines, two small guns, besides 
a sword and cutlass. 

The Standish cottage now standing was 
built by his son Alexander, and is nearly two 
and a half centuries old. It was built partly 
of materials taken from the old house. 

Elder Brewster, the Captain's old friend, 
lived near him, but nothing remains of that 
house to-day ; and not far away across the 
marshes and the river lived the dear compan- 
ion of his labors and responsibilities, — Gov- 
ernor Bradford in Kinijston. 




And a pretty drive it is to this old town 
which all the way looks invitingly across 
the bay. By the meadows the road winds, 
and through them winds Island Creek. Just 
at the entrance to Kingston Jones' River is 
crossed, and here the first settlements were 
made. Here Governor Bradford lived at 
Stony Brook in the parish of Jones' River, 
Plymouth, for Kingston was not set off from 
Plymouth until 171 7. The site of his dwel- 
ling is now marked by a tablet. 

From his house he overlooked the meadows 
to Captain's Hill to the dwellings of his friends, 
Standish and Brewster. Here he entertained 
the Chief Wamsutta, and it is thought by 
many that this was his principal home. If 



l82 



The Pilfjrim Shore. 



it was not, he may dispute with Samuel 
Fuller, the old colony"s first physician, the 
distinction of having been the first summer 
resident of our coast, for the doctor had a 



-r^.^^,,, «r-««*.Hi**i«^ .---J 










I "?; 



By Island Creek. 



summer house near Smelt Brook, and a town 
house on Leyden Street, not far from the 
governor's. 

The most interesting landmark of Kingston, 
however, is the Major John Bradford house. 
Close by the river it stands on a high em- 
bankment. It is not disfigured by paint, and 



Kingston. 183 

its cool grays melt softly into the siiadows 
of the great elms that shade it. 

In King Philip's War the house was par- 
tially burned. It was at the time abandoned, 
for Major Bradford had removed for safety 
to the guard house across the river. One 
day he returned with a few of his neighbors 
for some forgotten goods. As he neared 
his home he saw smoke rising over the trees, 
and upon drawing near he found that his house 
was on fire. At the same time his attention 
was attracted to an Indian sentinel who was 
standing guard on Abraham's Hill, and was 
waving his blanket aloft and crying, Choc- 
wang! Chocwang ! (the white men are 
coming). He knew then that it was the 
savages who had set the fire. He and his 
companions rushed boldly forward, but the 
Indians were so intent on plunder that they 
did not hear their comrade's warning nor the 
approach of the white men, so that Bradford 
rushed without any warning upon them, and 
firing his piece apparently killed one of 
them before they fled. On coming to the 



i84 



The Pilfjnm Shore. 



spot where the man fell, however, he was 
astonished not to find the body of the 
plunderer, and for a time believed that he 




^^"^ V 







Major John Bradford'' s House. 

must have been mistaken. But after the 
war an Indian came one day to him and 
declared himself to be the wounded man, 
and in proof thereof showed the scars where 
three bullets had passed through his side. 



Kingston. 185 

This old house was for years the casket 
in which reposed that famous manuscript, 
the Bradford " History of Plymouth Planta- 
tion." But in 1728 Major John Bradford lent 
it with other precious books to Thomas 
Prince to take out of it what he thought 
proper for his New England Chronology. 
It is known that others used it years after- 
ward and that Governor Hutchinson had it, 
and by many it is believed that this Tory 
governor carried it away with him to Eng- 
land. Certain it is that it disappeared about 
the time of the Revolution, and for many 
years was lost to the knowledge of the world. 
But in 1855 it was by chance discovered in the 
library of the Bishop of London at Fulham. 

How or when it got there nobody knows. 
Senator Hoar, speaking of the loss of the 
book and its discovery in England, declared 
that he knew of no incident like this in history, 
unless it be the finding of the royal crown 
and sword and sceptre of Scotland, in a 
chest in the castle of Edinburgh, where they 
had lain unknown for over a century. 



1 86 The Pilorrim Shore 



iD' 



Called by the English, The Log of the 
Mayflower, it was recognized by them to be 
of great value. So that repeated attempts 
failed to procure its return to this country. 
Finally, in 1897, through extraordinary good 
fortune, our Ambassador to Great Britain, 
the Hon. Thomas F. Bayard, secured the 
precious document, and conveyed it to the 
people of the Commonwealth of Massachu- 
setts in the care of whose governors it now 
rests. 

There are man}- other old and interesting 
houses here in Kingston, for the place is 
most intimately associated with the history 
of the first-comers, for it was during nearly a 
hundred years a part of Pl}'mouth. 

It was named Kingston, it is said, at the 
suggestion of Lieutenant-Governor Dummer 
on the 28th day of May, 1717, that being the 
birthday of his gracious majesty King George 
the First. It is now connected with the 
mother-town by an electric railway which 
affords an enjoyable ride to Plymouth. 



^LY/AOUTH 








,W. .'-""-^^^^^^i^JNW*'*'^^' 



URELY, the journey 
along the Pilgrim 
Shore reaches the 
climax of its interest 
at Plymouth, an inter- 
est so great that most 
visitors rush directh' to 
the mothertown, and regard 
not the man\- attractions that 
lie along the \va}'. 
t Or the\^ come b}' water, and 

thus only see from the steam- 
er's deck the low line of rocks and sand 
along which the colony spread and prospered. 
Without doubt they save themselves some 
trouble, for everything along the shore is not 




1 88 The Piloi'ini Shore 



o 



arranged for the sight-seer, as it is at Ply- 
mouth, where all is ticketed and labelled, 
where there are good guides and guide-books. 

This thoroughness is indeed a distinguish- 
ing feature of Pilgrim land and Pilgrim story. 
No episode of history has been so thoroughly 
investigated. And it would seem that every 
fact connected with the Pilgrim movement, 
which must ultimately be regarded as the real 
origin of the United States, — every fact, I 
say, discoverable by the energy and persis- 
tence of man must have already been brought 
to light, classified, and recorded. 

A considerable literature has grown up 
about these facts, one that continues to grow 
in volume and even in interest. The writer 
will not attempt then to rehearse what has 
already been so ably and so gracefully told, 
but will confine himself to his own impres- 
sions: those of a visitor who has only the 
information of the ordinary reader, and one 
who is apt to view a subject from the pic- 
turesque stand-point rather tlian from that of 
critical exactness or caeer denial. 



Plymouth. 189 

The general impression of Plymouth, as 
one enters the town from Kingston, is that of 
prosperity, thrift, and respectability. Good 
streets there are, well shaded and watered, 
comfortable houses, with finely kept grounds 
and lawns, and a glimpse of thriving indus- 
tries, while over all is an air of modernity. 

In this the newer part of the town is the 
monument that we saw long ago from Dux- 
bury. It is called the National Monument to 
the Forefathers, and was " erected by a grate- 
ful people in remembrance of their labors, 
sacrifice, and sufferings for the cause of civil 
and religious liberty." A work of recent 
years it is, for it was finished no longer ago 
than 1888, although the corner-stone had 
then been laid for twenty-nine years. 

It stands on a bare hill reached by shady, 
pleasant streets that make its shadeless 
exposure seem more barren by contrast. 
Opposite the entrance to its precincts, how- 
ever, is a friendly wayside bench that affords 
a good view of it and a rest under green 
leaves. 



IQO The Pilgrim Shore. 

The pile itself is granite of indifferent art, it 
must be allowed, but nevertheless, as it rises 
from the bare hill against the sky, it has a 
certain amount of dignity, — a dignity which 
would not be lessened, I believe, were the sur- 
roundings softened a little by flower, shrub, 
and tree. " Why," said a native to me, " that 
hill 's nothing but a heap of sand, but it 's a 
good one. If we had it anywhere where 
'twould be of use, 't would be worth a fortune 
for mortar-sand." 

The monument coisists of a pedestal, 
octagonal, from every other face of which 
extends a buttress ; on these four buttresses 
are seated as many figures of heroic size ; on 
the pedestal itself stands a gigantic figure of 
Faith. She holds a Bible under one arm, and 
points heavenward with the other. The seated 
figures represent, respectively, Morality, 
Law, Education, and Freedom. All are 
conventional in design, and are supplemented 
by small accessory figures. On the faces of 
the buttresses are four slabs of marble carved 
in high relief and protected by plate glass. 



Plymouth. 191 

They represent the departure from — Delft 
Haven, the signing of the Social Compact, the 
Landing at Plymouth, the Treaty with Mas- 
sasoit. 

Not far from the monument on the Main 
Street is the Museum, " Pilgrim Hall." 
Within it is an interesting collection of many 
and divers objects connected with or related 
more or less intimately to the history of the 
town, many of them of priceless value as 
relics of the Forefathers. But of course they 
differ in degree of value and interest. For 
instance, in the Alden case is John Alden's 
Bible, a fine halberd found in the cellar of 
his house at Duxbury, and a few bricks from 
Bradford's house at Kingston, and beside 
these relics a Chinese razor and a pine-tree 
shilling. 

The most interesting of all the cases is, I 
think that which contains the Standish be- 
longings. Here is the pewter plate and iron 
pot so familiar to us in photographs, and 
brought over by the Captain in the May- 
flower. There 's a piece of his hearthstone 



192 



The Pilgrim Shore. 




too, and other 
relics from his 
house in Dux- 
bury. Greatest 
prize of all, how- 
his sword — 

" his trusty sword of Damascus 
Curved at the point and inscribed with 
its mystical Arabic sentence." 

What food for thought and 
fancy it is ! Its sun and stars suggest the an- 
cient days of Persia, the glories of Babylon 
and Nineveh. Indeed no one knows how old 
it is, this blade of the Captain's. Centuries 
before he dimmed its brightness with the 
blood of his red brother (was it with tliis 
blade he hewed off the head of savage and 
brave Witawamat?), centuries before that it 
may have been wrenched by Moslem hands 
from some fierce fire-worshipper, then wet 
with blood of Greek, Christian, and Jew, when 
the hordes of Omah first humbled Palestine 
to Islam's yoke. It may have flashed in 
triumphal processions beneath the minarets 



Plymouth. 193 

of Damascus, or " by Bagdad's shrines of 
fretted gold." Then hundreds of years later, 
perhaps, when 't was drawn in defence of the 
Holy Land, it was torn from swart Paynim 
grasp by a gaunt crusader, a Standish, on the 
very walls of Jerusalem. 

An heirloom then it became, descending 
from Standish to Standish, until finally, after 
being wielded against the cruel Spaniard in 
the Low Countries, 'twas brought across the 
seas to be the defence of the Pilgrim Republic. 

All this may be true, indeed Professor 
Rosedale of Jerusalem does not hesitate to 
declare that the sword was forged before the 
year A. D. 637. A part of the inscriptions he 
says are in Cufic, in which was written the 
Koran in the time of the prophet Moham- 
med, one thousand years before Standish set 
foot in America. 

One of the inscriptions Professor Rosedale 

translated thus : — 

" With peace God ruled His slaves (creatures) and 
with the judgment of His arm gave trouble to the 
valiant of the mighty and courageous " (meaning the 
wicked). 

13 



194 The Pilgrim Shore. 

The hilt is not the one Miles Standish knew, 
the blade has probably known many another. 

His was a basket hih, like the ones carried 
by Cromwell's Roundheads. As will be seen, 
it is a backsword, and with its basket hilt 
should have made an excellent weapon for 
the hacking sword play of his time. 

I used it as a model in drawing the crest 
of the great seal of the Commonwealth of 
Massachusetts, a broadsword held in an 
arm clothed and ruffled as the law demands. 

But there are gentler reminders of the 

Captain than this, for here are fragments of 

a quilt which once belonged to his first wife 

Rose, — 

" Beautiful rose of love that bloomed for me by the 
wayside.'' 

But more suggestive, and even as touching, 
is the sampler embroidered by his daughter 
Lora. Its colors are but the ashes of their 
once bright hues, and the faded floss is sink- 
ing gradually into the background of yellow- 
ing linen. Still the pretty design of the 
marshalled bands is plainly marked, and 



Plymouth. 195 

below them one can yet distinguish the 
prayerful verses : — 

" Lorea Standish is my name. 
Lord guide my hart that I may doe Thy will ; 
Also fill my hands with such convenient skill 
As may conduce to virtue void of shame ; 
And I will give the glory to Thy name." 

In the White case is the will of Peregrine 
White. With what tender pity one thinks of 
him in looking at this last testament ! Bowed 
by over fourscore years, and as the will re- 
cites : under many weaknesses and bodily 
infirmities, not even able to sign his name, for 
at the end appears a cross, " his mark," sign 
typical of his afflictions, for the infirm old 
fingers could no longer guide the pen for 
even this little. 11 ow bold and good his 
penmanship once was may be seen by the 
bond written and signed by him years before, 
and now in the case K. 

All sorts of things are there in these cases, 
most of them connected intimately or remotely 
with the colony's history, — -rare books, pre- 
cious documents, china, silver, in short, most 



196 The Pilgrim Shore. 

everything, even to a broken brick or two 
and a handful of nails. In one case is a 
rapier which suggests Plymouth's first, last, 
and only duel. Two of the young men 
fought with rapiers and daggers after the 
fashion of the day, and one was wounded. 
They were afterwards so ignominiously pun- 
ished that duelling was stopped forever in 
the colony. 

The VVinslow relics betray, as might be 
expected, evidence of a certain luxury beyond 
the others. A bit of real vanity is that fine 
slipper of Madame Governor VVinslow's. All 
embroidered in silver, it suggests moments of 
elegant idleness that must have been almost 
unknown in Old Colony days. It is what the 
French call a mule, has a high Louis XIV. heel, 
but covers only the instep and toes. 

Interesting, too, are the cunning baby shoes 
worn by Governor Josiah Winslow, the first 
governor's ring, Penelope's inlaid cabinet 
and beaded purse. But all will find things to 
look at for themselves, still may I say 
a word about the things "behind the rail"? 




e 



Plymouth. 



199 




We know the two quaint 
chairs by the pictures and 
copies of them that have so 
often been made. Both were 
brought in the Mayflower, 
one by Elder Brewster, and 
the other by Governor Car- 
ver. They are of ash, and 
ahke in style, — a style that is reflected in 
the ancient flax-wheel near by, and would 
seem to indicate that the wheel also was of 
the same period. Still this 
style, as applied to wheels, 
persisted for many years, 
and ma\' be seen to-day 
in remote districts of 
Holland in wheels of a 
much later date. 

Then there is the cra- 




Flax-ivheel. 



200 



The Pilgrim Shore. 



die, that in which Susanna White rocked her 
baby, the first Pilgrim baby. It is woven 
of osiers, and recalls the skill of the Dutch 

in wicker - work. It 
suggests now, and 
must always have re- 
minded the Pilgrims 
of their Holland 
home, the low level 
landscapes, the 
placid canals, and 
the long dykes, wil- 
low-bound and 
shaded. And while 
the picture of the 
Low Countries is painted on our fancy, we 
should remember gratefully the brave hearts 
of that land which for so many years offered 
the only asylum for the priest-oppressed, and 
who maintained so long the only bulwark, of 
soul freedom in all Europe. 

There 's a model, too, of a ship of the 
Mayflower's type, and a beautiful ideal pict- 
ure of the Pilgrim ship in Mr. Halsall's lovely 




Cradle. 



Plymouth. 201 

painting of her at anchor in the ice-bound 
harbor. 

A great many pictures hang on the walls 
beside, but the most precious of them all is 
the portrait of Governor Edward Winslow ; for 
it is the only authentic portrait of a May- 
flower Pilgrim. 

Of all the other things to see in Pilgrim 
Hall I will not speak. Each visitor will find 
enough that is interesting and fancy-stirring. 
So I will leave the museum and return to the 
town. 

Of all the old streets in Plymouth the love- 
liest is surely North Street. Its elms and 
lindens frame, with leaf and shade, a sparkling 
glimpse of the sea. The row of great lindens 
with rugged furrowed trunks were, it is said, 
brought from England in a raisin-box, and 
were set out by Colonel George Watson over 
a century ago. 

It is said that Penelope Winslow set out the 
two in front of the old Winslow house oppo- 
site, and a droll story is told of the one which 
shades the seats on Cole's Hill. 



202 The Pilgrim Shore. 

The tale is that once upon a time a maiden 
hved there, on the hill, who was made miser- 
able by the attentions of an unwelcome suitor. 
Hints rolled off him like water from a duck's 
back. On snubs and cuts his love throve as 
do pigs on sour milk. In fact, his devotion 
was as steadfast as it was disagreeable. No 
wonder then that the maid, at the end of her 
patience, at last armed herself with a stout 
switch one night, and falling upon the persist- 
ent swain with amazonian ardor, drove him by 
force from the field. Then, the story goes, 
she cast her switch away upon the brow of 
the hill, where it took root and grew, a monu- 
ment to unrequited love. 

The old Winslow house at the corner of 
North and Winslow streets is a fine example 
of colonial architecture made extra decorative 
by the recent additions. Its frame was brought 
from England, so 't is said, in 1745, the year 
of its building. It has been very much 
altered lately, and is more picturesque than 
ever. In its antique drawing-room Ralph 
Waldo Emerson was married to his second 




North Street. 



Plymouth. 205 

wife. Upon his wedding day he drove from 
Concord to Plymouth in his chaise. That 
evening he was married, and the next morn- 
ing he " set forth in the chaise again and 
brought his bride before sunset to their new 
home in Concord," a journey of more than 
sixty miles each way. 

Cole's Hill is at the end of North Street, 
and overhangs the road as it dips to the 
wharves. On its brow are a few seats which 
ma}' be divided after the fashion of a Spanish 
bull ring into sonibra and sola. They are 
generally occupied by professional as well as 
amateur loafers, and the latter will probably 
find that they will have to sit in the sola. 

Seaward from this point is a broad view of 
the harbor, and at high tide it is a lovely one 
too, but, when the water recedes, gray green 
flats rise to sight and to smell. Through 
these levels wind the channel and crooked 
sluggish streams of varying widths that all 
seem fouled by the muddy bottom. 

However, let us not turn up our noses at 
these flats, for perhaps the tiny colony owed 



2o6 The Pilgrim Shore. 



^' 



in a large measure its preservation to the 
unlimited store of clams and lobsters that 
these flats afforded. 

On the farther side of the harbor stretches 
the long, low, slender line of Plymouth 
Beach, hummocky and sandy, then beyond 
its ribbon, farther seaward, the headland and 
lights of the Gurnet. On that low bluff, ' t is 
said, was buried in 1004 the bold Norse wan- 
derer and chieftain Thorwald. 

The next headland to the left is Saquish 
(meaning plenty of clams), and the next in 
the same direction is Clark's Island. Weather 
and tide permitting, it is a pleasant sail to 
this last, where, remote from trolley and tour- 
ist, the spell of old Pilgrim memories is apt 
to be much more potent than in the town 
itself 

The island is quite large, containing over 
a hundred acres, and although the original 
woods were long ago cleared away, it has 
fine trees and a good soil. It is said that 
crops of figs are grown there in the open air. 
Near the middle of the Island is a hu^e 



Plymouth. 207 

bowlder formerly called Election Rock, be- 
cause in the old days the young folks used 
to picnic there on ancient election holidays. 
But now it is called Pulpit Rock, because, 
according to tradition, in its shelter the Pil- 
grim explorers worshipped God on that first 
Sunday in Plymouth Harbor. On it there- 
fore have been cut these words from " Mourt's 
Relation " : " On the Sabbath day wee rested." 

This great bowlder is similar to Plymouth 
Rock, and is the only other one of any size 
along the coast. However, there is a small 
one on the southeasterly shore of the Island 
bearing some strange black markings said by 
some to be the footprints of the Evil One 
himself, while by some others they are no 
more than the trail of a passing witch. 
Sometimes, however, they are called Mary 
Chilton's footsteps. 

But after all there is but one rock — ■ 
Plymouth Rock. Right at the foot of Cole's 
Hill it lies, under a granite canopy, and as 
nearly as possible in its proper place. For 
the rock has been a traveller, and for a time 



2o8 The Pilo^rim Shore 



iD 



it rested in Town Square, from the breaking 
out of the Revolution till 1834, when one 
Fourth of July it was carried in triumphal 
procession to the lot in front of Pilgrim flail, 
where it rested for forty-six years. In those 
days, it used to seem to the visitors that the 
Pilgrims had made pretty long steps to land 
on it from their shallop. Happily its stupid 
and unnatural position was at last recognized 
by a gentleman from Baltimore, Mr. Joseph 
Henry Stickney, who, without any flourish 
of trumpets, returned it to its original site. 

That this is the actual spot at which the 
Pilgrims landed — Mary Chilton first — is 
too well attested by facts and tradition to 
admit of any doubt. In those days it was 
the only convenient landing-place from such 
a deep and bluff-bowed boat as the Pilgrim 
shallop, and the Pilgrims had had quite 
enough of landing on the sands by wading 
in the icy wintry waters. Then it was on the 
edge of the beach that was backed by the 
deserted cornfields of the natives, and, as now, 
near the mouth of the sweet brook that 




'■^ Mary Chilton first, ^'' 



Plymouth. 211 

slipped down there from the forest-girdled 
ponds inland. To-day its surroundings are 
prosaic and unlovely, and I doubt that they 
are always forgotten by those who step 
thoughtfully on the hallowed spot. 
However, let us go down the steps 

" Down to the Plymouth Rock that had been to their 

feet as a doorstep,'' 
" The corner-stone of a nation." 

I have said that the Rock has been a 
traveller in recent years, but it is more of 
a Pilgrim than these short Journeys would 
warrant. Whence and when did it come 
here? For it is as much a stranger on these 
sandy shores as were the Pilgrims them- 
selves. Let the words of Goodwin answer. 

" In dim and prehistoric ages, ' Fore- 
fathers' Rock ' had been reft from its parent 
ledge by icy Nature ; wrapped in the chill 
embrace of some mighty floe or berg of 
the glacial epoch, it had been slowly borne 
for centuries over mountain and valley, 
until, guided by the Divine Hand, it found 
at last a resting place between land and 



212 The Pilgrim Shore. 

water where in future eons it was to become 
the most noted bowlder in Christendom. 
On that rockless strand it had patiently- 
awaited the great day which should, though 
unconsciously, make it forever famous as the 
stepping stone of New England civilization." 
It was on Cole's Hill that the dead who 
departed in the first dreadful winter were 
buried, and if one re-ascends the steps, and 
turns to the left by the tiny greensward, a 
flat tablet will be seen which marks the spot 
where rest the bones of some of those unfor- 
tunates. Over their heads the Pilgrims 
planted the waving wheat, that it might, with 
its grace and greenery, shield from savage 
eyes the resting place of so many dead. 

" Lest they should count them and see how many 
already have perished." 

Other sad memories must the Forefathers 
have had of Cole's Hill, for I doubt not that 
it was from this vantage ground that they 
watched the Mayflower depart, — that only 
bond between them and the Old World. Yet 




Site of the First House, 



Plymouth. 215 

not one of them repented their venture, even 
with the recollection of the dreadful winter 
fresh and sore upon them. 

" O strong hearts and true ! not one went back in the 

Mayflower ! 
No, not one looked back, who had set his hand to 

this ploughing ! " 

Close to their doors were these early 
graves, for near by, where Carver Street over- 
hangs Leyden Street, may be seen the site of 
the first common-house. A gambrel-roofed 
house stands there now, and on it the Common- 
wealth of Massachusetts has placed a tablet 
which sets forth that here the Pilgrims built 
their first common-house, and in it, on the 
27th of February, 1621, they first exercised 
the right of popular suffrage, " and Miles 
Standish was chosen Captain by a majority 
vote." Strange that it was not a unanimous 
choice ! And under its roof, too, was made 
the memorable treaty with Massasoit, — 
" after friendly entertainments & some gifts 
given him," a peace that continued for 
twenty-four years. 



2i6 The Pilgrim Shore. 

As one looks down into Leyden Street 
from near the great elm in front of the 
church, one regrets that the neighborhood of 
this, the First Street of the Pilgrims, which is 
in part so picturesque, should be so marred 
by the necessities of modern life. Among 
the old-fashioned houses with quaint roofs 
and massive chimneys, these wombs of light 
and power make an incongruous and unwel- 
come presence. 

'T was along Leyden Street that the rows, 
of roughly fashioned thatch-roofed houses 
were huddled together under the protection 
of the fort on Burial Hill. And separated 
they were from the hills to the south by the 
Town Brook, whose sweet waters then 
tumbled, unfettered and unfouled, into an 
estuary that could shelter several ships in 
winter's need. 

To-day its mouth is disfigured and ugly,. 
but along its banks the sloping gardens of the 
old houses, sites of the ancient mere-steads, 
make many a picture full of queer lines and 
surprises. And along its length, almost to 



Plymouth. 



217 



its source, its natural beauty is marred by 

a succession of dams and mills whose clatter 

reaches quite into the forest. 







"iii'.!T»';ii'ii;;;-: 




Ancient Merc-steads. 



However, I was not writing about the 
brook, 'twas about the Pilgrims' First Street, 
of which Leyden Street was a part. On it, 
near its other half, Town Square, is a drink- 



2i8 The Pilgrim Shore. 

ing fountain built of field stone. Over it is 
inscribed : — 

" Drink here and quench your thirst. 
From this spring they drank first." 

It is called the Elder Brewster spring, be- 
cause it is on the land allotted to him in 162 1, 
and where he built his house. 

The Square is a busy place, the centre of 
Plymouth's activity. At its head stands the 
fine new church of the Pilgrimage. At first, 
the Newcomers worshipped in the fort on the 
hill, each man with his matchlock beside 
him, while a sentry on the cannon-guarded 
roof kept a sharp lookout for foes ; but in 
1638, they built a meeting-house, and for a 
hundred years it was sufficient to their needs. 
Then another church was built, which en- 
dured for a century more, when it was re- 
placed by a " gothic edifice," which, in turn, 
was destroyed by fire in 1892. 

The present fine structure was built five 
years later, and on its front it bears a tablet 
which reads : — 




Governor Bradford. 



Plymouth. 221 

THE CHURCH OF SCROOBY LEYDEN AND THE 

MAYFLOWER 

GATHERED ON THIS HILLSIDE IN 162O 

HAS EVER SINCE PRESERVED UNBROKEN RECORDS 

AND MAINTAINED A CONTINUOUS MINISTRY 

ITS FIRST COVENANT BEING STILL THE BASIS OF ITS 

FELLOWSHIP 

IN REVERENT MEMORY OF ITS PILGRIM FOUNDERS, 

THIS FIFTH MEETING HOUSE ERECTED AD M. D. CCC. XCVII. 

On the right hand side of Town Square, 
looking toward Burial Hill, lived Governor 
Bradford, and here he died in the sixty-eighth 
year of his age, having lived long enough 
to see the struggling colony, of which he 
had so long been the guardian, firmly and 
prosperously established. 

Upon his shoulders had rested more than 
upon any other's the care and responsibility 
of government. Thirty-one times was he 
chosen governor, and many of these times 
much against his will, for he believed in 
rotation in office, and that every one should, 
in turn, do his part. But he never shirked 
a dut}', and even in the years when he was 



22 2 The Pilsrini Shore 



&' 



not chief magistrate, he bore most of the 
burdens of the office, if not its honors. Only 
" by importunity he gat off," as Winthrop 
says, during a few years of deserved leisure, 
and, to secure this respite, he once filed 
eight objections to a re-election. 

Yet, in the midst of his many duties, he 
found time for study in those branches of 
learning wherein he excelled. A good lin- 
guist he was, speaking Dutch and French, 
and knowing Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. 
In connection with his study of this last 
tongue, he touchingly says : " Though I am 
grown aged, yet I have had a longing desire 
to see with my own eyes something of that 
most ancient language and holy tongue, in 
which the law and oracles of God were written, 
and in which God and the angels spake to the 
holy patriarchs of old time ; and what names 
were given to things from the creation." 
Beside his linguistic skill, he was versed in 
antiquity, history, philosophy, and theology. 

But his learning was less remarkable than 
his liberality in that narrow age, and most 



Plymouth. 



223 



unusual was his freedom from nearly all of 
the superstition which like a nightmare op- 
pressed his age and confused the keenest 




The Bradford AToiiumcnt. 



intellects. For him, the comets had no 
terror, nor had the eclipses, for witchcraft 
he felt only contempt, and in his history 
never alludes to it. His tolerance in relie- 



224 The Pilgrim Shore. 

ious matters, as well as his courtesy and 
thoughtfulness for others, is witnessed to by 
the Jesuit Father Druillette, who visited him 
in Plymouth. The visit falling on Friday, 
the Governor served the priest a dinner of 
fish, in respect of the usages of the Church 
of Rome. His most precious gift to the 
world, next to the fostering care he gave the 
struggling settlement, is the history that he 
wrote of Plymouth colony, and which, after 
being lost for many years, has since been 
returned to the Commonwealth of Massa- 
chusetts by the Bishop of London. Of all 
the Pilgrims, he is the most eminent. He, 
more than any other, sowed the seeds of that 
tolerance and freedom which have become the 
crowning glory of the Republic. 

On Burial Hill, that had sheltered his happy 
home of many years, he was buried with sad 
and reverent honor by his mourning people. 
There his grave has been discovered and 
properly marked, and thousands of pilgrims 
each year seek it out with reverence. Near 
the crest of the hill it is, and on it a marble 



Plymouth. 225 

obelisk has been erected. " Do not basely 
relinquish what the Fathers with difficulty 
attained " is its Latin inscription, and in 








T/ie Oldest House. 

Hebrew: "Jehovah is my lot and mine 
heritage." 

Burial Hill, though low, is steep, and domi- 
nates the country in every direction. It was 
the natural place for the fort that defended 
Plymouth, a fortress and church combined, 
15 



2 26 The Pilgrim Shore. 

for in it the Forefathers met to worship God, 
and on its roof they mounted six cannon. 
The site of the fort is marked, as well as the 
corners of the watch tower which was after- 
wards put up on nearly the same place. 

On the Hill it is beheved that the Pilgrims 
buried their dead from the earliest time, ex- 
cepting those who died during the first 
winter. But the gloom of a graveyard does 
not hang over it, for its situation is so pleasant 
and so accessible that it is used as a park, 
and in fact few pleasanter resting-places can 
be found anywhere. The view it commands 
of the harbor and the town itself is charm- 
ing, and a cheeriness is given to it by the 
many visitors. With a guide-book, it is easy 
enough to find all the interesting things, and 
there are always guides who are ready to 
help one for a small fee. 

I have spoken of these, the well known 
" sights" of Plymouth, because it is next to 
impossible not to ; but if the visitor confines 
himself to them he will miss much that is 
interesting. A walk through the older parts 










'.#sr^'\^ 









■ ■ >'C - 
" A Paradise to Etchers." 



Plymouth. 229 

of the town is quite worth while, for al- 
though Plymouth is not so extraordinarily 
built as is Marblehead, and holds not so 
many fine old houses as does Salem, still it 
has a picturesqueness and charm far from 
commonplace, and is in its unexpectedness 
quite fresh and original. 

In the older parts of the town the ancient 
houses are set on the very edge of the sidewalk, 
just as they are in the Old World. Doubtless 
this custom was brought from England by 
our ancestors. A few of these old houses 
are parallel to the streets, either lengthwise 
or endwise, but the most of them have no 
regard for street lines, even if they are not 
set quite eater-cornered. Each one seems to 
have been placed according to the particular 
needs of the house and the lot, and were 
adapted, as were the streets themselves, to 
" the lay of the land." Thus the town's ways 
go twisting in and out or up and down, as 
occasion demands, along a serrated line of 
buildings. 

All the old houses, of which there are a 



230 



The Pilgrim Shore. 




number, have been much 
ahercd, and everywhere 
an extraordinary accre- 
tive style of building has 
been developed. A par- 
adise it is to etchers and 
sketchers, for it abounds in 
" bits " quaint and unusual. 

The picturesque old town it- 
self is finely set, for down to its 
doors almost come the light 
forests that spring from the thin 
soil. A country of little hills it 
is, with a dry scant loam like 
Cape Cod ; woods of oak and 
birch and pine are interspersed 
with fields of moss, and scant 
grass, embossed here and there 
by clumps of bayberry, sweet 
fern, blueberry, and wild rose. 
And everywhere gleam the shal- 
low Cape ponds, hundreds of 
them, like sapphires in emerald 
settings. Powdered are they with 







:x 



^'/us/ as the Pilgrims found it." 



Plymouth. 233 

white lilies, and hedged by broad bands of 
bkie flags, green rushes, the purple pickerel 
weed, and nodding pink sabbatia. 

Here in early spring under the pines, the 
Mayflower blooms, just as the Pilgrims found 
it so long ago, and gave it, so 'tis said, the 
name of Mayflower, in loving remembrance 
of the good ship which had brought them 
safe across the seas, and had been for so long 
a time their only home. 

Through these woods a few of the wild 
deer still roam and breed. Plenty there 
were in the old days, and a great help they 
were to the colonists. The wolves, against 
which the early comers had to protect them- 
selves, have long since been extinct. 

Probably the country itself looks about as 
it did at the time of its settlement, for the 
Cape was never heavily wooded like the 
North Shore, and the annalists speak of much 
open and fine champaign country. 

And if the landscape has changed but 
little, is it not also true that the lofty spirit 
of the Pilcfrim Fathers still lives unchanged 



2U 



The Pila:rim Shore. 



in their descendants all over our broad land? 
For has He not multiplied their seed " as the 
stars of the heaven ; and as sand which is 
on the seashore" ? Surely. So from every 
part of this great nation their children come 
to do homage to the memory of those illus- 
trious men who, self-exiled for conscience' 
sake, crossed the wild seas to an unknown 
wilderness, and founded a nation on the sure 
foundations of Justice, Charity, Liberty, and 
Character. 




In uniform style exquisitely illustrated 



THREE HEROINES of NEW 
ENGLAND ROMANCE 

I. PRISCILLA, by Harriet Prescott Spofford 

11. AGNES SURRIAQE, by Alice Brown 

III. MARTHA HILTON, by Louise Imogen Guiney 

With notes on the towns in which they lived, and eighty- 
seven illustrations, including numerous full-page pictures 
By EDMUND H. GARRETT. 



12mo, Cloth, gilt top, $2.00 
Full morocco, gilt edges, $4.50 



A charming volume, dealing witri the courtship and marriage 
of three famous beauties of old colonial times. 
Mr. Garrett's notes describe and illustrate the famous old 
towns of Plymouth, Marblehead, and Portsmouth. 

The old stories are told again with renewed sweetness by the 

pens of three New England women of to-dav. — Ne-xv England 

Magazine. 

Gracefully written and felicitously illustrated. — Tlie Literary 

World. 

One of the most dainty and altogether pleasing examples of 

symmetrical and iiarmonious book-making we ha\'e seen. — 

l^he Independent. 

The romantic stories of these three beautiful women are placed 
in a book bound in artistic manner — in delicate gray, pale 
blue, or white with gold — a volume uiiich would have been 
a wonder to plainly nurtured Priscilla, whose sole books were 
doubtless her leatlier-bound Bible and her ill-printed, parch- 
ment-covered psalm-book. Even the luxurv-loving Lady 
\\^entworth knew naught of such daintiness. — Alice Morse 
Earle, in the Book Buyer. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



014 076 653 7 



